He wanted and did not want to do what she asked. He could not do it. It was clear to him he could not do it, not with the ghost shell and projectile, his too close knowledge of that murderous process.
"You can't do it," she said.
"You're right. You've got me," he said.
She turned over, her legs apart, thighs leading down to her silky places. "And you thought you could do anything the kinky bitch wanted."
"I can't even pretend to kill the kinky bitch," he said.
"You don't mind putting your other thing in there."
"It's not a gun."
"Why don't you take your fucking arsenal and go home?"
"I don't want you to be a kinky bitch."
"But I am, right?"
Unanswerable woman logic.
"And who the hell are you?" she said. "What right have you to want me to be anything you want me to be?" She was shrill, and he thought of being overheard.
"I want you to make me feel good when I make you feel good," he said, thinking that it was possible she faked it all, all the moans of pleasure. It was possible. He could be near tears, or he could redefine everything. What he thought sounded stupid—that she should find his intensity fulfilling, defining. Helen had—or had she? Marjorie would—or would she? Jane? Certainly Jane had wanted and found pleasure in his maleness, or in something about her clandestine visit to his mountain. And then he thought, Leave this. Leave it. Somewhere there is a cool uncomplicatedness that can be tested by time.
20.
In the next week and a half he didn't leave the mountain at all. He finished his stonework, except for the upper part of the chimney, and went on. The cabin took on shape, now, as though it hadn't been quite seriously a house before. The first log, bolted to the footings, seemed rough, bent and uneven compared to the straight lines of the cement and sawn joists; in this part of the construction he would have to use his eye, and match one log's characteristics with another's, trimming and shaping with adz, ax and chain saw. Splines of thin pine furring would fit in grooves down the length of each log, to tighten as the logs shrank down upon themselves. The logs were fresh and clean, and though heavy were of a density and texture that pleased him and felt good to his hands. He ran out of milk for his coffee, bread and vegetables, but put off going down the mountain. He ate whatever he found in cans. Jake had to eat dry chow with water, which he ate but not without reproachful looks. In the middle of the second week the cabin walls were up and ready for windows, doors and the sills that would carry his rafters. He was out of cigarettes, so could not smoke with his celebrational drink.
At night he slept as he had as a child. He lay down on his cot, slept, dreamed, and woke at first light, the night having passed as if in an instant.
One morning he woke to the heavy tatting of rain on the tent, so he decided to go down for supplies. And the mail, which he didn't want. He wanted nothing to happen out there, but of course the bashings and dismemberments, plots and betrayals would go on. The hurt, the neglected; the last week and a half—it was August now, he calculated—had been pure, with a pure purpose cleanly fulfilled, no crazy unhappy vengeful creatures sighting in on him. He put a canvas tarp in the truck to cover his supplies and went down the mountain, planning to eat breakfast at the Welkum Diner in Leah.
When he passed Louise's and Coleman's house he had to look at it. Coleman's Toyota was there. Then he was past it—an old house like many others. George's truck was gone from his driveway. Then the high road to Leah.
He would get his mail last. At Follansbees' he shopped for food and whatever else caught his eye, taking interesting things from shelves, vegetable and meat counters with a pleasant lack of accountability. Everything was just for him, except for the canned dog food, so he could take anything into his cart. Everything fit into the wide cab of the truck, so he didn't need the tarp. He had deliberately shopped while hungry, and now went to the Welkum Diner and ordered coffee, orange juice, scrambled eggs, ham, home fried potatoes and English muffins with blueberry jelly. He could eat anything. He wanted to read nothing, write nothing, not talk; he wanted to put a roof on his cabin, to make doors and glaze windows to look out of beneath the sturdy roof. At night the deer came to the brushy pasture; he would, when the cabin was complete and furnished, prune and fertilize the apple trees around the field, free up hawthorn, maybe in season plant concord grapes, autumn olive and other food and shelter shrubs for the wild mammals and birds. He would leave aspen for the partridge, near the spruce that was their shelter. He would make a pool near the brook, and let the brook trout grow into giants. It would be a temperate paradise. Ducks would breed there—black ducks and wood ducks. Bear would come to glut themselves on the apples and shit great piles of sweet smelling seeds and cores. Bless the wild, the independent, those who minded their own business.
At the Post Office the teller told him his mail was due to be returned to the senders but they'd kept it a few more days just in case he came in for it, so there it was. He paid the postage due and took it out to his truck to look at it, the rain tapping the hood and cab. First he lit a cigarette; poison as antidote. His hands were wet from the rain and the truck's door handle, moisture seeping into the pile of mail. There were five letters from Jane Jones, a letter from the Avenger, a letter from Ham Jones, a letter from Martin Troup, a windowed letter for Helen from the American Association of University Professors, material from Common Cause, the American Civil Liberties Union, Senator Brooke, Orvis, Gokeys and Brookstone. Bills from Mobil and Mastercharge. What he wouldn't bother to open he threw on the floor next to his groceries. Bills went into the dash compartment. He was left with the real letters, the envelopes seeming heavy with portent, threat, adhesiveness. Why this barrage from Jane Jones? All he did was what the lady wanted. Lonely widower humps horny housewife. Lord, Lord, these ragged wounded splintery women! He read the letters according to the postmarked dates. The first four were friendly and chatty. What she did Monday, how Ham had made love to her in the morning while she thought of her indiscretion. She really wanted to talk to him. Her period (she was off the pill because of the bad things she'd heard) came Tuesday, sort of. Her innards were a little out of whack. So were her emotions. She wanted to see him, to talk to him. Where? When? Discretion advised: no return address on notes to her, though she always got to the mail first, no sweat. Love, Jane. Then: "Dear Luke, I told Ham, I had to. I never heard from you. I didn't know he would take it the way he did. He says he's never been unfaithful to me, 'really,' whatever that means. . . ."
Ham's note:
What are your intentions now that you loused up our marriage? Jane, my wife, is sick. Don't ever come around here again. You are not welcome.
The Avenger's note:
Luke Carr:
You murder what you touch, but I will touch you last.
Mr. Death
Martin Troup's note:
Luke, I've just got to come to the conclusion that you are fucking with me. I brought you to New York because I thought it would be good for you, get you out of your doldrums. I knew about the accident. Hell, who didn't? But this character, Sevas, he says he "used" to know you. Are you after my job, Old Buddy? I'd just like to know. When an old friend turns out to be a slimy scheming shit, well, you may not want to know it but you got to know it or you might step in it and track it all over the rug. I also happened to gather the information that you are jabbing his ex-wife. Too fucking neat, Old Buddy, too fucking neat.
M.
To try to explain anything to any of them was simply, clearly, plainly beyond his powers. He could not say the first word. And why should he try? He was the one continually struck by astounding information. They would all find out sooner or later, or they wouldn't find out sooner or later. He refused to be in their world anymore. He had to get his perishables back up the mountain and put away. He had been happy there for more than a week.
The Avenger's note was literate; the ear that had tested that senten
ce was too good, and that was ominous, as though for the first time real intention and the fixing of a time of revelation were at hand. He reached under the dash, above a wire harness, where the holster hung, removed the pistol and jacked a cartridge into the chamber, then replaced it, cocked, with only the thumb safety on.
Ron Sevas, it seemed indicated, was Louise's ex-husband. A con man all right; the man had always shown a strange joy at being caught doing something sly or dishonest. It seemed to energize him and raise him up onto a plane of intense life. Luke had heard of him on and off over the years, notably as one of the proprietors of the quick death of a famous magazine, ten years ago. It would appeal to Ron, after all the years, to be in a position to enter into some conning, manipulating, perhaps even guilt-absolving strategy by using Luke's name. There was a kind of glistening, boyish yet mingy survivorship about him that was irresistible to some. To Louise, he supposed, and to R.I.C. in their new, probably reprehensible venture. It was just the place for Ron to surface.
But let them all assume what they wanted. He would write no instructive notes, make no calls. No more explaining. The world of manipulation was out there, not where he was going.
He drove around Leah square and back toward Cascom on the high road. Somewhere on the flats the yellow supercar, the hunchbacked Dodge, nose down, appeared behind him in the swirls of mist from his wheels, then seemed to leap as it passed him at almost twice his speed and disappeared in its own streaming turbulence.
There was a quick thrill of apprehension at the sight of Lester's car, but it went away. The rain streamed against his windshield, then was thrust away by each beat of the wipers. In the cab he was warm and dry, and he was going home, the engine's familiar song of good, harnessed power all around him. He went through Cascom and up the mountain road, the trees softened in the rain and mist. Soon he would have a roof on the cabin and rain would be welcome, part of the weather for which he planned and built.
He turned in the farm road and drove down through the spruce, his wheels in rivulets, then out into the more open land by the old farm foundations. Cascom Mountain was gone behind gray. On the way down the hill toward the bridge he looked for tire marks in the gravel that was still soft in places, but the tracks he saw were probably his own. The bridge rumbled as he crossed the brook. He still looked for the yellow car, but it was not there. Jake was, and greeted him with a few howls of anger and affection.
"Hello, Jake," he said. Jake looked at him, suddenly quiet, as if some large thought had overcome him. "What are you thinking about, friend?" Luke asked, thinking himself of that strange line across which simple need and gratitude changed toward more complicated emotion. He thought of wolves and jackals, their tribal relationships, loyalties, orders of importance and dignity. Then man and man, dog and man, the latter combination hardly fair to the dog. A dog could run, and a dog had a nose. Jake was nearly over his bruises. The lump on his ribs was now the size of a walnut, growing smaller and harder. For a moment longer Luke squatted in the rain and ran his hands over the dog's body, Jake still, unwagging, submitting to medical examination, which was not petting or scratching and elicited a different response. Then a pat on a flank said the examination was over, and Jake could wag his tail again, turn away and get out of the rain.
Luke put away groceries and supplies, then took off his slicker and dried his hands before getting out Shem's single-shot shotgun and the old Marlin .22 rifle. He cleaned them both and lightly re-oiled them, Jake bright-eyed at the looks and the metallic sounds, maybe even the odors, of the guns. The old ammunition Luke would get rid of somehow, not by taking it to the town dump with his other trash, however. He didn't want to try to shoot it because of the mercuric primers and subsequent cleaning problems, and wanted to give no one a dangerous fireworks display at the dump when the fires that always licked through that maze of rat tunnels reached the old cartridges.
It was early afternoon, the rain beginning to lessen, when he looked out of the tent to see fragments of the mountain appear, long writhing shawls of clouds moving eastward over his head.
Jake, at his feet, sensed a foreign presence across the field, growled and moved forward with his hair up along his back.
Luke stepped back into the tent and fastened the webbed belt and holster around his waist, then put on his olive drab slicker over it, having a sharp memory that there was a cartridge in the chamber, the pistol cocked and the thumb safety on. He stepped evenly across the pressed-down grass in front of the tent and stood among young pasture pines, searching the field toward the trail, where Jake pointed. If someone were over there and meant him harm, the weapon he carried was not the right one for that distance. A rifle, any rifle, even the .22, would be more effective.
He didn't really believe someone was over there, but he had to take it into consideration—a small fear and a dullness. Jake moved slowly forward, growling, his tail down between his legs. Whatever it was, Jake thought it larger than a beagle. If it were a bear, it would have heard Jake and departed. Jake would not be afraid of a deer, but then he must have merely heard something, or the scent had come to his nose in a confusing eddy of wind, because the main push of the wind came upon him laterally, from the west, and Jake pointed south toward the trail.
Following Jake, Luke moved from the pines to a group of young aspen a little higher than his head. He would be visible, but not a clear target, and a moving one. Jake glanced back at him for courage and went ahead. When they came to the trail the evidence had vanished and Jake relaxed. Maybe a tree had twisted and cracked in the wind, or a branch, heavy with water, had fallen and made a sound only Jake had heard.
No one had been there, Jake said. He took a few casual casts back and forth and then said by his expression that they ought to go hunting—a bright new look.
"No, come on," Luke said, and went back to the tent. There was a hollow place in him, now gradually filling because of the usual, normal expectations and probabilities. But he had felt excitement and a kind of angry fear.
It was unfair. He went through a smooth convulsion of self-pity and anger, aware of the names of the emotions he felt. Had what he had done in this life justified the treatment he had received and was receiving? Did he kill what he touched? Was this justice? Infantile residues; the breast had been removed long ago, and he had been of the world too long to believe in justice. That lack of belief was not merely theoretical; it had been gained from experience. He was not a hurtful man, he believed, and yet his presence seemed to hurt people. He did what they asked, and then they were hurt, but he didn't mean to hurt. All he meant to do was to survive. There were, he hoped, enough miracles for him in his woods, or looming over his bald mountain. Or he was owned by the woods and the mountain.
His children had been mysteries to him, their power over him having something to do with their perfection in spite of the roughness and vulnerability of their characters. They needed him and tolerated him. Helen was the only woman he wanted to make children with. She died at forty-two, Gracie at twelve, Johnny at fifteen. No scenes from those lives; it was forbidden, except in dreams, where he had no authority.
It was as if he wrote the notes from the Avenger and mailed them to himself.
You fool, what will you do when your cabin is finished and you have to walk in the door?
The dog lay on the towel it had appropriated for its bed, breathing with a slight snore, now trembling and paddling its feet in a dream. A happy dream, the tail said, the feet now stilled. Love for this good dog, the recognition of it, opened in him frighten-ingly. He had to solve that problem, then. He had a hundred-dollar bill in his wallet—more, probably four times more, than Jake was worth, a calculation from another world. The money was probably worth four times more to Lester Wilson than it was to him. Equations, problems, the brutal, coarse weight of Lester Wilson. Such a man could always surprise.
He administered Jake's half-pill and gave him a can of dog food. When Jake saw him leave in the truck he didn't
try to follow; any half-intelligent beagle knew you couldn't outrun a truck. He drove down the mountain road steeled, he hoped, for this task. When he came to the Sturgis house he was startled to see Lester's yellow Dodge parked next to Coleman's Toyota. It was more than disconcerting, because these people should all be where they ought to be, revolving in their own courses. But he had come down to see Lester and he would.
Coleman came to the door in a bathrobe and bare feet, his pale, wrinkled face and moist blue eyes showing some kind of strain and apology. "I was about to take a shower," Coleman said. He began to move aside, as if to invite Luke in, then stopped that movement just too late for Luke not to understand.
"Is Lester Wilson here?" Luke said.
"No. Claire does some housecleaning for us. Lester, presumably, is at his trailer babysitting and getting sloshed on beer. You'll probably find him there."
"Thanks," Luke said. He began to turn away, then asked, "How's Louise?"
"Much better. They're letting her come home tomorrow."
"They?"
"Northlee Hospital, in its collective wisdom. Louise ingested too many pills with her booze, something she does occasionally, and accomplished what is called, for lack of the exact truth, 'an accidental overdose.'"
"My God! I didn't know that!"
"Well, she's all right this time. I've got to rush, now, Luke. Why not stop back around five? I'll give you a drink and fill you in on the Perils of Louise."
It was three-thirty. "All right. Thanks," Luke said.
Louise was a little crazy, but no matter how clear and simple the indications had been, he would have nothing to do with a more precise diagnosis. He didn't want to. He drove on toward Lester's trailer on the River Road. In what measure couldn't he understand suicide? She was a healthy, attractive animal, possessing all of her senses, and the world was green and fascinating, its lights, temperatures, shades, odors and winds changing and forever new. She had her clay to make into the nearly eternal, as he had his wood and mortar. She had, with the lovely shapes and textures of her body, helped him so easily. But she must see it all through different filters and lenses. To make a statement that one might like to die. Of course he had no one to make that statement to, not anymore. With a feeling of superiority that shamed him he thought that if he were to make that statement it would be once, and final; if he ended himself it would not be an act of communication at all, but the shutting of a door, no one on the other side but the light of day. But a young, healthy woman in her thirties, with the equipment, the instruments—no words for the miracles of perception. He would love her if she would let him (shame: take your small coin and spend it elsewhere). There were places he could not go. He couldn't dive that deep. But maybe he could help her. Then a voice said clearly, the same small voice that in other circumstances told him not to have another drink, that he should stay away.
The Followed Man Page 30
