He pulled himself from the wall and advanced slowly and steadily, and as he did so I caught the smell. It was indistinct and masked by some cheap cologne, but it caused me to hold my breath and take a step back from him nonetheless. It was the smell of earth and blood, the stench of rotting meat and stale animal fear that hangs in a slaughterhouse at the end of a long day’s butchering.
‘Nice car,’ he repeated, and a fat white hand emerged from one of his pockets, the fingers like thick, pale slugs that had spent too long in dark places. He caressed the roof of the Mustang appreciatively, and it seemed as if the paint would corrode spontaneously beneath his fingers. It was the touch a child molester would give a kid in a playground when its mother’s back was turned. For some reason, I felt the urge to push him away but I was stopped by a stronger instinct that told me not to touch him. I couldn’t have explained why, but something foul appeared to emanate from him that discouraged any contact. To touch him, it seemed, would be to blight oneself, to risk contamination or contagion.
But it was more than that. He exuded a sense of extreme lethality, a capacity for inflicting hurt and pain that was so profound as to be almost sexual. It seeped from his pores and flowed viscously over his skin, seeming almost to drip visibly from the tips of his fingers and the end of his ugly, brutish nose. Despite the cold, tiny beads of perspiration glittered on his forehead and upper lip, spangling his soft features with moisture. Touch him, I sensed, and your fingers would sink into his flesh, the skin yielding clammily to the pressure as it sucked you in.
And then he would kill you, because that was what he did. I was certain of it.
‘Your car?’ he asked. Those grey eyes glittered coldly and the tip of a pink tongue appeared between his lips, like a snake testing the air.
‘Yes, it’s my car,’ I replied. ‘That your Cadillac?’
He didn’t seem to notice the question, or decided not to notice it. Instead, he passed another long caressing movement along the roof of the Mustang.
‘Good car, the Mustang,’ he said, nodding to himself, and again there was that intense sibilance on the S sound, like water dropped on a hot stove. ‘Me and the Mustang, we got a lot in common.’
He moved closer to me, as if to share some deep, darkly funny secret. I could smell his breath on me, sweet and overripe as late-summer fruit.
‘We both went to hell after nineteen seventy.’
And then he laughed, a low hissing sound like gas escaping from a corpse. ‘Better take care of that car, make sure nothing happens to it,’ he said. ‘A man’s got to look out for what’s his. He should take care of his own business, and keep his nose out of other people’s.’ He walked around the back of the car before entering the Cadillac, so I had to turn to watch him.
‘Be seeing you again, Mr Parker,’ he said. Then the Caddy started with a low, confident rumble and the car made an illegal left onto Congress and headed in the direction of downtown Portland.
Chapter Five
Roger didn’t look too happy about being kept waiting for his food, because the permanent frown lines on his forehead had dipped by about half an inch by the time I got back.
‘You were a coon’s age,’ he muttered as he took the food. It was one of the longest sentences I had ever heard him speak.
I picked at my chicken and rice, but my appetite was gone. I was bothered by the appearance of the fat, bald man on Congress, although I couldn’t tell why, exactly, apart from the fact that he knew my name and made my skin crawl.
Roger and I returned to the roof, a chill wind now forcing the pace a little so that we had finished by mid afternoon just as the light was starting to fade. I paid Roger and he nodded his thanks, then headed back to town. My fingers were numb from working on the roof but the job had to be done before the heavy snows came, or else I’d be living in an ice castle. I took a hot shower to remove the grit from my hair and fingers, and was just making a pot of coffee when I heard a car pull up outside.
For a moment, I didn’t recognise her as she stepped from the Honda Civic. She had grown since I last saw her, and her hair was lighter, tinted with some kind of colouring. She had a woman’s body, large-breasted and generous at the hips. I felt a little embarrassed noticing the changes in her. After all, Ellen Cole was barely into her twenties, and Walter Cole’s daughter to boot.
‘Ellen?’ I stepped from the porch and opened my arms to her as she hugged me.
‘It’s good to see you, Bird,’ she said softly, and I hugged her tightly in response. Ellen Cole: I had watched her grow up. I could remember dancing with her at my wedding, the shy grin she threw back at her younger sister Lauren, her tongue stuck out teasingly between her lips at Susan in her bridal gown. I remembered, too, sitting on the steps of Walter’s porch with a beer, and Ellen beside me, her hands clasped around her knees, as I tried to explain why boys sometimes behaved like assholes to even the most beautiful of girls. I liked to think that was one area in which my expertise was beyond doubt.
She had been a friend to Susan, and Jennifer had loved her. My daughter never cried out when Susan and I left her for an evening, as long as Ellen was there to baby-sit her. The child would sit in the older girl’s arms, toying with her fingers, eventually falling asleep with her head on her lap. Ellen had about her a kind of strength that found its roots in an immense store of kindness and compassion, a strength that inspired trust in those smaller and weaker than she.
Two days after Susan and Jennifer had died, I discovered her waiting for me alone at the funeral home as I arrived to make arrangements for the bodies. Others had offered to accompany me, but I didn’t want them there. I think I was already retreating into my own, strange world of loss at that point. I didn’t know how long she had been waiting for me there, her car parked in the lot, but she came to me, and she held me for a long, long time, and then she stood beside me as I looked at pictures of caskets and limousines, never letting go of my hand. In her eyes, I saw the depths of my own pain reflected and I knew that, like me, she felt the loss of Jennifer as an absence in her arms, and the loss of Susan as a silence in her heart.
And when we left, the strangest thing happened. I sat with her in her car and, for the first time in days, I cried. That deep, still, placid thing inside Ellen drew the pain and hurt and grief from me, like the lancing of a wound. She held me again and, for a time, the clouds cleared, and I was able to go on.
Behind Ellen, a young man stepped from the passenger side of the car. He had dark skin and long black hair that hung lankly to his shoulders. His dress code was slacker chic, apart from his Zamberlain hiking boots: jeans, T-shirt loose over the top of his jeans, denim shirt hanging open over everything else. He shivered a little as he watched me with suspicious eyes.
‘This is Ricky,’ said Ellen. ‘Riccardo,’ she added, with a vaguely Spanish inflection on the word. ‘Ricky, come meet Bird.’
He shook hands firmly, then put one arm protectively around Ellen’s shoulders. It seemed to me that Ricky was territorial and insecure, a bad combination. I kept an eye on him as we went into the house, just in case he decided to make his mark by pissing against my door.
We sat in my kitchen and drank coffee from big blue mugs. Ricky didn’t say a whole lot, not even ‘Thanks’. I wondered if he’d ever met Roger. Put the two of them together and you’d have the world’s shortest conversation.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Ellen.
She shrugged. ‘We’re heading north. I’ve never been far north before. We’re going to make for Moosehead Lake, see Mount Katahdin, whatever. Maybe we’ll rent some ski-doos.’
Ricky stood up and asked where thejohn was. I directed him and he sloped off, slouching from side to side as he walked, like a man with his feet in parallel ditches.
‘Where did you find the Latin lover?’ I asked.
‘He’s a psychology major,’ she replied.
‘Really?’ I tried to keep the cynicism out of my voice. Maybe Ricky was trying to kill two birds
with one stone by taking psychology so he could analyse himself.
‘He’s really nice, Bird. He’s just a little shy with strangers.’
‘You make him sound like a dog.’
She stuck her tongue out at me in response.
‘School finished?’
She dodged the question. ‘I have some study time coming.’
‘Hmm. What are you planning on studying? Biology?’
‘Ha ha.’ She didn’t smile. I guessed that Ricky had pushed thoughts of semester exams from her mind.
‘How’s your mom?’
‘Good.’
She stayed silent for a moment.
‘She worries about you and Dad. He told her you were at the funeral in Queens yesterday, but that you didn’t have much to say to each other. I think she feels that you should sort out whatever happened between you.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve heard them talking,’ she said softly. ‘Is what he says about you true?’
‘Some of it, yes.’
She bit down on her lip, then seemed to reach a decision. ‘You should talk to him. You were his friend, and he doesn’t have many of those.’
‘Most of us don’t,’ I replied. ‘And I’ve tried talking to him, Ellen, but he’s judged me and found me wanting. Your father’s a good man, but not everything good fits his definition.’
Ricky came back into the room and the conversation sort of died. I offered them my bed for the night but was kind of glad when Ellen declined. I’d probably never be able to sleep there again if I had visions of Ricky humping in it. They decided to spend the night in Portland instead of Augusta, with the intention of heading straight for the Great North Woods the next morning. I suggested the Inn on St John, and told them to say that I had sent them. Apart from that, I left them to it, although I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what ‘it’ was. Somehow, I didn’t imagine Walter Cole would want to know either.
After they had gone, I got in the car and drove back into Portland to work out in the Bay Club at One City Center. Slating the roof had been exercise in itself, but I was trying to work off the little handles of fat that were clinging to my sides like determined children. I spent forty-five minutes doing peripheral hard-flow circuits, constantly alternating leg and upper-body exercises until my heart was pounding and my shirt was soaked with sweat. When I had finished, I showered and looked at the little fat deposits in the mirror to see if they were getting any smaller. I was almost thirty-five, I had grey hairs invading the blackness of my hair, and I was one hundred and eighty pounds of insecurity in a five-eleven frame. I needed to get a life – that, or liposuction.
The white Christmas lights glowed in the trees of the Old Port as I left the Bay Club, so that, from a distance, they seemed to be burning. I walked to Exchange to pick up some books in Allen Scott’s, then continued down to Java Joe’s to nurse a large one and read the newspapers. I rustled through the Village Voice to find out Dan Savage’s latest views on sex with eggs or urinary games. This week, Dan was dealing with a guy who said he wasn’t homosexual, he just liked having sex with men. Dan Savage didn’t seem to see the difference. Frankly, neither did I. I tried to imagine what Angel would have said to the guy and then figured even the Voice wouldn’t print what Angel would have said to him.
It had started to rain and wet streaks marked the windows like cuts on crystal and fell on the kids heading for the bars in the Old Port. I watched the rain for a time, then returned to the Voice. As I did so, I was conscious of a figure moving towards me and a rank smell in my nostrils. My skin prickled with unease.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ said a distinctive voice. I looked up and started. The same coldly amused eyes watched me from the doughlike face, rain glistening on the bald head. The mingled scents of blood and cologne were stronger now, and I drew back a little from the table.
‘Do you want to find God?’ he continued, with the kind of concerned look that doctors give smokers when they start patting their pockets for cigarettes in the waiting room. In his pale hand, he held a crumpled Bible pamphlet, a crude pen drawing of a child and its mother visible on one side.
I looked at him in puzzlement, then my face cleared. I thought for a moment that he might be some kind of Jesus freak, although if he was then Jesus was scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits. ‘When God wants me, he’ll know where to find me,’ I replied and went back to reading the Voice, my eyes on the page but my attention riveted to the man before me.
‘How do you know that this isn’t God looking for you now?’ he said, as he sat down across from me.
I realised that I should have kept my mouth shut. If he was a religious nut, then talking to him would only encourage him. These types act like monks who’ve just been given a weekend off from their vows of silence. Except this guy didn’t seem like the religious kind, and I got the feeling that there was a subtext to his questions which I hadn’t quite grasped.
‘I’d always hoped He’d be taller,’ I told him.
‘There’s a change coming,’ said the bald man. His eyes had a kind of intense look to them now. ‘There’ll be no place for sinners, for divorcees, for fornicators, for sodomites, for women who don’t respect their husbands.’
‘I think you’ve just covered some of my hobbies, and all of my friends,’ I said, folding the paper and taking a last, regretful sip of my coffee. It just wasn’t my day. ‘Wherever they end up sounds good to me too.’
He watched me carefully, like a snake preparing to strike if it saw an opening. ‘No place for a man who comes between another man and his wife, or his little boy.’ There was audible menace in his words now. He smiled and I could see his teeth, small and yellow like the fangs of a rodent. ‘I’m looking for someone, Mr Parker. I think you may be able to help me find him.’ His obscenely soft red lips stretched so far that I thought they might burst and shower me with blood.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am.’
I looked around the coffee house. The kid behind the counter was distracted by a girl at the window table and there was no one else sitting down here at the rear of the premises.
‘I’m looking for Billy Purdue,’ he continued. ‘I was hoping you might know where he is.’
‘What do you want with him?’
‘He has something that belongs to me. I want to claim it.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know any Billy Purdue.’
‘I think you’re telling lies, Mr Parker.’ The tone and volume of his voice didn’t change, but the threat of danger it contained rose a notch.
I flipped back my jacket to reveal the butt of my gun.
‘Mister, I think you have the wrong person,’ I said. ‘Now I’m going to leave and if you get up before I’ve gone, I’ll use this gun on your head. You understand me?’
The smile didn’t flicker, but his eyes were now dead. ‘I understand,’ he said, and again there was that terrible sibilance in his voice. ‘I don’t think you can be of help to me after all.’
‘Don’t let me see you again,’ I said.
He nodded to himself. ‘Oh, you won’t see me,’ he replied, and this time the threat was explicit. I kept him in sight until I reached the door and watched as he took the pamphlet and set it alight with a brass Zippo. All the time, his eyes never left my face.
I retrieved my car from the parking garage at Temple and took a ride by Rita Ferris’s place, but the lights were out and there was no reply when I tried the buzzer. Then I drove from Portland to Scarborough Downs until I came to Ronald Straydeer’s place close by the junction of Payne Road and Two Rod Road. I pulled in beside Billy Purdue’s silver trailer and knocked on the door, but the trailer was quiet and no lights burned inside. I peered in the window, cupping my fingers at the glass, but the place still looked a mess. Billy’s car stood to the right of the trailer. The hood was cold.
I heard a noise from behind me and turned, half expect
ing to see that strange head erupting like a white sore from its tan raincoat. Instead, there was only Ronald Straydeer, dressed in black denims, sandals and a Sea Dogs T-shirt, his short dark hair hidden by a white baseball cap decorated with a red lobster. He held an AK-47 in his hands.
‘I thought you were someone else,’ he said, looking at the gun with embarrassment.
‘Like who? The Vietcong?’ I knew that Ronald swore by his AK. A lot of men who had served in Vietnam did likewise. Ronald once told me that their standard-issue rifle, the M1, used to jam in the rains of Southeast Asia, and they would routinely replace them with AK-47s stolen from the bodies of Vietcong. Ronald’s gun looked old enough to be a war souvenir, which it probably was.
Ronald shrugged. ‘T’ain’t loaded anyhow.’
‘I’m looking for Billy. Have you seen him?’
He shook his head. ‘Not since yesterday. He hasn’t been around.’ He looked unhappy, as if he wanted to say more.
‘Has anyone else been looking for him?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I thought I saw someone last night looking in the trailer, but I could be mistaken. I didn’t have my glasses on.’
‘You’re getting old,’ I said.
‘Yuh, he could have been old,’ replied Ronald, seemingly mishearing me.
‘What did you say?’
But he had already lost interest. ‘I ever tell you about my dog?’ he began, and I figured that Ronald had told me just about everything I might find useful.
‘Yeah, Ronald,’ I said, as I walked back to the car. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about him again, another time.’
‘You don’t mean that, Charlie Parker,’ he said, but he smiled as he spoke.
‘You’re right,’ I smiled back, ‘I don’t.’
That night, cold rain fell like nails on my newly-shingled roof. It didn’t leak, not even from the parts that I had done. I felt a deep satisfaction as I drifted off to sleep, the wind rattling the windows and causing the boards of the house to creak and settle. I had spent many years falling asleep to the sounds of those boards, to the gentle murmur of my mother’s voice in the living room beyond, to the rhythmic tapping of my grandfather’s pipe on the porch rail. There was still a mark on the rail, an ochre stain of tobacco and worn wood. I had not painted over it, a sentimental gesture that surprised me.
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