by Gerry Boyle
So I went on, my teeth keeping up their Latin beat, my feet getting numb, my hands aching. I counted steps again, and after a hundred and thirty-one I came out in a little cleared area. It was the butt end of the driveway.
No truck.
Oh, man, I felt so alone. Clair was seventy-five miles away and going nowhere. There wasn’t another house for three miles, probably wasn’t a cop for fifty. I had cut the cord this time, I was floating in space, on my own.
I crossed over and into the woods again, moving behind the house, twenty feet in. The lights were on but I couldn’t see anybody, so maybe Melanie was out here someplace, or maybe she was lying down or in the bathroom. I stopped and watched the windows.
Nothing moved.
Now my teeth were chattering more and it probably was getting colder. I held my hands under my arms and watched and still there wasn’t anybody in sight. I walked slowly to the back door, the one Bobby and Coyote had come in. If I could get to the phone. Call 911 and head back in the woods and wait an hour for the sheriff’s deputy to come. Maybe a state trooper.
I stood by the door, looked in the window. Nothing.
Was Melanie around the corner? Was she waiting with her shotgun, thinking I might try this? My teeth clattered like somebody had me by the nape of the neck and was shaking me like a dog shakes a rat. It would be warm in there. A couple of minutes in there would be so . . . so warm.
I touched the latch. Eased it up. It moved stiffly, then slipped.
Clack.
I didn’t breathe. Waited. Nothing moved, so I eased the door open. It squeaked, but faintly. I opened it enough for my body to slide through, then took two steps inside and froze.
Waited.
Listened.
The house ticked. The woodstove popped. I took two more steps. Where was the phone? I thought. Tried to picture it. I thought I remembered a black phone on the wall in the hallway past the kitchen, toward the front room where we sat and talked.
I took two more steps. My boots made a gritty sound on the wood floor. I waited. Took two more. The passage to the storeroom under the stairs was on my right. It was dark. She could be waiting there. I could step out and boom, she could blow my head off.
She didn’t.
It was a straight shot now, ten feet along the wall and then reach around into the little indentation where the phone was. The lights were on. Anyone outside would see me clearly and I wouldn’t see them. I’d be inching along the wall and they’d be hurtling back to the house. It had to be quick.
I hurried, four or five steps in the open, reached around the corner and—
The receiver was gone. The bastards.
I turned and bolted out the way I had come, pausing to ease the door shut and then moving into the woods, beyond the house, uphill from the driveway. The high ground was easier going but littered with branches and last year’s dead leaves, crackly maples and slippery silvery oaks. I moved a hundred yards into the woods, climbed over a blowdown, then slid down a pitch and landed on my back. I got up and listened, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.
“You’re gonna freeze to death out here,” a voice said.
32
He was behind and above me, squatting in a comfortable crouch. His rifle was across his knees.
“You’re making a mistake,” I chattered.
Stephen looked at me, his face blank.
“I ain’t done anything yet.”
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“No shit. You’ve got hypothermia. You know you can die in the summer from that, you get cold enough? Your body temperature drops and things start shutting down. When the brain gets chilled, it’s sayonara.”
“But . . . but they’ll kill me.”
He looked at me.
“Not if I don’t let ’em. Let’s go.”
He made a little gesture with the rifle barrel.
“That thing loaded?”
“Always.”
“What if I run?”
“They’ll hear you.”
I looked at him. His impassive enigmatic eyes.
The rifle motioned again.
“Up the hill,” Stephen said.
I went first. Stephen was behind me, moving almost silently. My feet were lumps. My hands numb. When I looked down at them, they were bleeding from scratches I hadn’t felt. My head felt better.
We moved straight up the side of the ridge. I counted steps but gave up at three hundred. We reached the top of the ridge, zigzagging between the trees, and moved along the crest for a hundred yards.
“To your left,” Stephen said, and I started down the other side, hanging on to saplings and trees. After twenty yards, he told me to go right again, to follow the ridgeline. I did, and then he told me to stop. I did that, too.
I heard a rustling behind me, to my right. I turned and Stephen was crouched along the side of the hill. He moved some branches aside and there was a hole, like the entrance to a bear’s den.
“Inside,” Stephen said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope.”
The rifle waved in my direction. I looked at it and at him. I moved toward the hole, bent down, and then dropped to my hands and knees. I crawled headfirst into the pitchblackness. Stopped. The rifle poked me in the buttocks.
“Keep going.”
I did, and Stephen was behind me. I stopped again, felt something in the air that felt like a bigger space. There was a flick and flame and I saw earthen walls with roots looping through them. There was an old blue carpet on the floor. Plastic bags hung from the roots and there was a wooden platform with a sleeping bag on it. Next to the platform was a Coleman lantern. Next to the lantern was a Coleman heater. On the other end of the platform was a wooden crate, turned over, with magazines and books piled on it. There was a vent in the ceiling with a piece of stovepipe shoved into it, like a chimney.
“So,” I said, “is this where those elves make the cookies?”
He didn’t laugh.
“You can sit on the bed,” Stephen said.
I did, and he moved with the lighter and lit the lantern. The mantle glowed white and light filled the room. Then he moved to the heater, pumped the lever four or five times, and fired that up, too.
“In a minute this place will be seventy-five degrees.”
“I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Not yet,” Stephen said.
“Which one do you mean?”
He shrugged. I sat.
The room warmed luxuriously and I held my hands out toward the heater. They began to sting and then pulse with stabbing pain. But pain meant nerves weren’t damaged, that I’d just have to thaw out. I could take it.
Stephen fiddled with the lamp and the heater and then picked up the magazines and put them neatly on the ground and sat on the crate, the rifle still across his knees. His eyes were onyx black in the gaslight. There was a little stubble on his chin. I watched him through my fingers, outstretched toward the heat. I wanted to take my boots off but I didn’t want to seem like I was ready to stay.
“Don’t you ever put that rifle down?” I asked.
“Not much.”
“Am I supposed to be your prisoner here or what?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“You working on it?”
“I guess.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to warm up and then I want to walk out to the road and flag down a car and get the hell out of here.”
“And never come back?”
“Something tells me I won’t be invited.”
“You gonna go back and write your story?”
He looked at me, watching for my answer.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t know if I’m going back, at this point. So I can’t know if I’m going to write anything.”
“If you get back to your house, are you going
to write something?”
I considered him. Decided to tell him straight.
“Yup. It’s how I make my living.”
“What are you gonna write?”
“About how Bobby and Coyote and your mother seemed to be idealistic marijuana activists, and maybe they were, but then they turned into plain old crooks, pulling a life insurance scam.”
Stephen’s eyes flickered but I couldn’t tell with what emotion.
“You say what you think, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t insult you by lying to you. That’s the story. That’s what this is about. That’s why I’m here.”
“And they’re out there.”
“Looking for me to kill me,” I said.
He looked down. Ran his fingers up and down the blue-black gun barrel.
“They’re not murderers. Not my mom. Not Bobby.”
“Coyote?”
“I don’t know. I’ve come close to popping him. He’s a friggin’ animal.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. He looks at my mother when she’s not looking at him. Looks at her butt when she bends over and stuff. I hate his guts.”
“But Bobby doesn’t.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. They’ve known each other since they were kids. They, like, made this pact when they were, like, my age. Blood brothers and all that.”
“Tom and Huck,” I said. “That’s sweet.”
“Yeah, right. Now we can’t get rid of the guy.”
“Sure you can. You can get me out of here. Your mother testifies against Coyote and gets a reduced sentence. Maybe suspended. She was coerced, you know? Threatened if she didn’t go along with the plan. Coyote goes away for a long time.”
“And Bobby?”
“He goes, too.”
“She won’t do that.” Stephen said. “I mean, she’s married to the guy. She loves him or whatever.”
“She loves you more. She wouldn’t leave you.”
“I don’t know.”
He scratched his head, fiddled with the heater again. I flexed my fingers and toes. The toes were just starting to hurt. When they were thawed a little more, I’d jump him first chance I got.
“I don’t know, McMorrow,” Stephen said suddenly. “This is a tough one.”
“Yup.”
“I get you out of here and you write this story, and jeez, just telling the cops. I mean, they all get busted. My mother. I can’t let you hurt my mother. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Bobby and Coyote will be gone. Your mother won’t be hurt by that.”
“What’d they do with me if I stayed? Put me in a foster home?”
“Probably something like that. I have a good friend who does that. Works for the state. I could talk to her.”
“Jeez, I’d be getting my own mother arrested. What kind of guy does that?”
“What kind of guy kills somebody? That’s what somebody’s done here, Stephen. There was a body in that car, you know. It wasn’t Bobby, but it was somebody. I don’t think they dug it up in a graveyard.”
He sighed. Looked at his boots. Knocked them together.
My feet were feeling better. It was almost time.
“This is tough,” Stephen said. “What if they put my mother in jail for ten years?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve done this for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of deals worked out. She could do a deal easy. I’ll testify for her.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can let you go. Let me think.”
Stephen thought. I waited.
“If I don’t help you?”
“The thing unravels anyway. I told a reporter in Massachusetts about the whole scam. I told a buddy of mine where I was going when I came up here. They switched the dental records, Stephen. All the cops have to do is ask the dentist what kind of work he did on Bobby. He says little or none, and they say, ‘Then why does this X-ray show a mouth full of fillings?’ He says, ‘Because it can’t be Bobby Mullaney’s X-rays.’ The whole thing comes crashing down. And if there’s a murder tacked on the other end—”
“Yours?”
“Uh-huh. Then we’re looking at life sentences. You’d never see your mom again, at least not without looking through an inch of Plexiglas.”
“Friggin’ A,” Stephen said.
He had his hand on the butt of the rifle, down low. The other high on the barrel, stroking the barrel. The .22 was his worry beads.
“This really sucks. I mean, the other thing is, you seem okay, McMorrow. I mean, I don’t want you to write about my mom, but you seem like a pretty good shit.”
I smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, and I came off the bed, six feet through the air, and landed on him and the rifle, and the crate went over and Stephen’s head hit the earthen wall and he said, “Ooooh,” and we went down, him squirming underneath me, the rifle pressing against my crotch.
I had to keep him underneath me, use my weight, but he was wiry and slippery and strong, and he wrapped his leg around mine and started to flip me over. I flashed back to Clair and got my right arm up and drove it down over and over. His mouth, his chin, his cheekbone, his eyes, over and over.
Blood spurted from his nose, but his teeth were clenched like he’d been beaten before and he could take it. He still had both hands on the rifle.
“Let go,” I said, my jaw clenched, too, and I reached underneath me with my left arm and got hold of his hand, which was on the trigger, but he’d have to throw me off to bring the barrel around.
I let go of his hand and wrapped that arm around his neck so I could feel the stubble on his chin. I held him close and kept the right going at his face, short hard punches, over and over and over, and he couldn’t move and couldn’t protect himself and I kept punching and suddenly I felt the arms beneath me relax and his head loll back and my fist was raised.
And I stopped.
“Sorry, Stephen,” I said. “I like you, too.”
He looked up at me, bloody and woozy, and then his eyes gradually focused.
And he started to cry.
33
I left Stephen hog-tied with his boot laces and gagged with my handkerchief. I couldn’t have him screaming for help or running to get the others, but I did leave the heater on, and turned off the light. The gun and a box of .22 long rifle ammo, I took with me.
When I crawled out of the cave, it seemed even darker outside, and I crouched for a moment to orient myself. I didn’t feel so stoned anymore, which was good, but I wasn’t sure where the road was. I went over our walk again in my mind.
We’d followed the ridge that seemed to run at an angle away from the driveway. The driveway ran perpendicular to the road, sort of. But then the road veered to the north just below the Mullaneys’ driveway. I could miss it and end up going west, deeper into the woods. But then, the farther I went, the better off I was. If they were still waiting by the swamp.
I set off just below the ridgeline. I didn’t want to be silhouetted or spotted moving up that high, if they had staked out the driveway down by the road.
The woods were fairly open here, but the ground was strewn with branches that snapped, leaves that crackled. I tried to move quietly, remembering Clair’s commando instructions, given to me when we tromped through the woods in search of deer.
You don’t move in a straight line. You pick a spot for your foot before you plant it. You stop often and listen.
But that took patience and discipline, and part of me wanted to run pell-mell for the road, screaming at the top of my lungs. They couldn’t catch up with me, unless they drove.
Patience won out.
I walked the ridge, very slowly and almost silently. When I stopped to listen I heard trees rattle and birds rustling on their roosts. I heard a rustle in the leaves and froze, then followed. It was a rummaging skunk.
My clothes were still sogg
y and I started to get cold, but it didn’t matter. I was close to getting out. I was close to living the rest of my life. I could feel the anticipation, could imagine the glorious pavement under my feet. I had to fight to keep from moving faster, noisier.
I heard a truck. It was coming from behind me, to my right.
The road was closer than I’d thought. I crouched low and the headlights pierced the woods. No, it was a spotlight. It flicked across the trees above my head.
I lowered myself to the ground, the rifle beside me. The truck came closer, the motor roaring in low gear, and then it passed and continued on. I watched and listened for it to reach the main road to see how close I was. It rumbled, rumbled some more, then stopped. I heard the motor move up to first, then second, then go quiet again.
It was on pavement.
I got up and started in that direction, but off to the left, away from the driveway. The woods were open here, more cut over, and I didn’t want them to see me coming out. I needed to get back in the brush. I needed—
I heard steps.
They were behind me, not crashing but not commando-quiet, either. I couldn’t tell how far, but they were coming faster than my steps, and whoever it was would be gaining on me. I turned off to my left, moved into the brush, and crouched and waited.
The steps crunched closer and then I could see a figure. It came through the trees, pushing the brambles aside, walking.
Bobby.
In his right hand was a handgun. He was looking to his right, peering through the trees toward the driveway. Like a marsh bird, I froze in my crouch and waited. He was fifty yards away, then thirty, then coming close, his steps making a soft crunch in the litter on the ground. His eyebrows were white-blond, too. His eyes were still black.
I held my breath as he passed, the safety off on the rifle. If he turned this way, I’d fire. If he saw me, I had to put him down and run for the road.
But he didn’t. He moved past me and then his back was to me, the handgun swinging down low by his thigh. I waited until he was forty yards away and I followed, just to keep him in sight. I didn’t want him waiting for me behind the next tree, circling around and shooting me in the back.
Bobby led me to the road, a couple of hundred yards away. He broke through first, and I waited, still in the woods, well above him. He moved down the road toward the driveway, walking on the gravel shoulder. In Florence, Maine, you could walk down the highway with a handgun and not raise suspicion.
