by Paul Monette
“They got fourteen inches in nine hours. By the time they were spotted, Barlow was dead and Jasper had gone into shock. The other guy lost four toes.”
“And Artie?” she asked, when he didn’t go on.
“Not a scratch. He walked away from it.”
For the rest, he said, he couldn’t begin to guess why Artie took the blame. Perhaps he felt guilty, lucking out. With the others laid up in bed or dead, it devolved on him to make the explanations. Artie had the status of a star at Carbon Mountain. His was the most conspicuous lapel to pin it on. Deep down, he may have had a will to fail. Perhaps he’d been waiting all along for a precipice he could topple off.
“But there must be something else,” insisted Vivien. “A man doesn’t throw his future away. That would be too perverse.”
In fact, of course, there were men who did just that. She had to admit, the scene of him taking the guilt for everyone else wasn’t hard to imagine at all. Sweet-tempered Artie, gentle to a fault, would go that far instinctively. Just as he always had at Steepside, taking care of the errands, the clamorous fans and broken toys.
It must have been Carl who’d intervened. His plan for an empire built on Artie’s star had gone awry, and it probably made him furious. He would have put it to Artie just when Artie was too upset to object. How a man who had a past to hide never made it to the top without it all coming out. He’d be pitched to the ground before he ever closed his hand around the prize. He was already in up to his ears with the deans and the slow-witted local police. There was only one way to cut their losses. Jasper was clean, by reason of being hospitalized. They would have to play the scapegoat up and the victim down. This entailed a minor renegotiation of the future.
“If he had to kill somebody,” Vivien said, “I don’t see why he didn’t kill Carl.”
“You’re forgetting something. Artie was still in love with Jasper at the time. I don’t know what it was like during all those years between, but lately that love got turned around. How do you think it made him feel, coming up on ten years later? He took the heat and fucked his career—and for what? So Jasper could piss it away on drugs and street meat? What does a man like Artie think, when he wakes on the morning of April third?”
“When we first got married,” Vivien said, in a most abstracted way, “it was all so strange. Artie loved him more than I did.”
“I almost wish I didn’t have to drag the whole thing up again. He’s worked so hard to become the forgotten man.”
“But I still don’t buy the murder,” Vivien protested—even if the story moved her more than she could say.
“Of course not,” Greg assured her, as he turned to stow his papers in the box. “That’s what I mean. We got two different crimes. We have to make separate arrests.”
He turned to the temple proper and pulled the double bronze doors toward him. From the pocket of his bright red hunter’s shirt, he took the heavy key and fitted it into the lock. The bolt shot like a .38, as if to say no one was getting in for ten more years at least.
“May the better man win,” he said with heavy irony. “Or I guess I mean the right one.”
There was nothing left to do now but go. They each grabbed a flap of the cardboard box and stepped out onto the hillside trail. They had so far to backtrack now, it must have crossed their minds they hadn’t a moment to lose. Besides, they couldn’t guess how much of the journey home would be in tandem. They might hit a fork that would split them up before they got to the foot of the mountain. They could only take it step by step. But they went without a backward glance, though they’d puffed an hour uphill to get there. It was as if they realized, both at once, that they had to get good at giving up backward looks entirely.
“What’ll you do with the key?” she asked. “You have to give it back to your baby monk?”
“It’s out of the dead file. Nobody’s going to miss it.”
He clearly didn’t want to talk any more about his assignation. That was all right with her. She’d come around to his way of thinking. She wanted no advice on Carl, and she figured she owed the same hands-off to Greg as regarded Artie. They shouldn’t give up their separate tracks till one of them got a confession. If the one with the weaker case should give up now without a fight, he’d end up being the other’s badly armed assistant. They’d probably never get over it, whether or not they got their man. Besides, the idea of a race appealed to her—not least because she knew she’d win.
They kept their downhill remarks to a bare minimum. They praised the cloudless weather, pointed out all the early flowers, and remarked on the pungent smell of rain from the night before. They might have been two naturalists with a box of specimens between them. After a while, the college came into view below, in a sheltered valley beside an oval ice-blue lake. Built of a pinkish local brick, with its towers and courts and long arcades, it was a college right out of a movie. Without any bad ideas, or the ravening after professions. It looked the perfect place for a man without worldly airs.
No wonder Artie got to be a hero here, she thought. He was made for a cloistered world. Even given the chance he lost to the freak of fate, she doubted he ever would have made it big like Jasper. He didn’t have the flair for being a regular guy. He’d kept his pride instead.
Her hiking shoes were fat with mud, her wool slacks soaked from the trailside grass. The unthawed ground sent a chill to the pit of her stomach. The sun beat down on the rest of her, roasting her good. None of it seemed to bother her. She just kept striding forward.
They tramped to the foot of the mountain in twenty minutes flat. As they made their way across the college quad, a bell was ringing for midday prayers, or perhaps it was only lunch. The monks were coming by in twos and threes. Greg flinched at first, to think someone would ask to know their business. But as he cast a colder eye over all these misfit types, he realized they didn’t have the balls to approach a man and woman. There was too much eunuch introversion in the way they glanced aside. There was one, of course, who would have known instantly where they’d been and what they’d pinched, but Greg didn’t see him about just now. He was probably lighting candles somewhere, strangling with remorse.
Then he became aware of the strangest thing. Though the robed and close-cropped members of the order probably banned the media from their midst, they all knew just who Vivien was. He could tell from the furtive, sidelong looks—the whispered tones with which they passed her name, like a relic from group to group. She was the reason no one made them stop. He felt like he was crossing enemy country on the arm of a wizard. The ground on every side was simply inviolate.
What he never could have predicted was how much he would like it. They seemed to charge the world they walked through with a vivid, low-voltage field of force. And though Vivien alone was the object of desire, Greg possessed the equivalent power, by reason of proximity. It made him feel terrific.
“I thought they were going to kneel and strew your path with palms,” he observed as they passed out under the arch to Vivien’s rented car.
Since she didn’t answer and didn’t laugh, he could only assume it happened all the time. From where she sat, he thought, everyone else must seem like zombies. He felt a proper pang of sympathy at all her isolation, but he also thought to wonder how she used the fact that people went into trances when she passed.
“I’m driving right through to New York,” she said. “Are you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You could turn in your car up here,” she proposed. “We could share the driving.”
He watched a row of cathedral elms go by at the side of the road. If he had his choice, he’d go by train. With his forehead pressed against the window, and a three-course lunch as they skimmed among the Berkshire Hills. He scarcely remembered how it used to be—locked in at the top of the Cherokee Nile, without a breath of air. Perhaps he’d done such a turnabout that he suffered now from an opposite condition. Maybe he’d have to live outside. Pitch a tent on his terrace, or out in Grif
fith Park.
“As long as we split the expenses,” he said.
“Sure,” she allowed, turning left at the gate to the inn. “Think of all the money we’ll save. Enough to buy a Rembrandt.”
It was certainly cause to marvel, Vivien Cokes with a little extra cash. She laughed out loud at the thought of it. To Greg in the other seat, just then, she didn’t look widowed and thirty-two at all. She was simply young and free.
“I’ll leave you off at the mill,” she said, “and then go up and pack. We’ll meet at the lodge in half an hour.”
“No, no—go right on up to your place. I’ll walk back.”
He supposed he took the same care she did not to get sentimental over people. The woods were something else again. He wanted one more episode, entirely to himself. So he grew quite silent as she drove the narrow lane between the trees—with the underbrush so close on either side, it scraped the car like nails across a blackboard. Half a mile later, they came out into the clearing and whooshed through the two-foot grass. She parked in a weedy patch of dirt beside her cottage. And when she turned to make another point, he was already out and gone.
He capered across the meadow as if it really were a race. He gained the trees in a matter of seconds. Then he dropped his speed to snail’s pace, plunged his hands in his overall pockets, and breathed a little sigh. This place was his. And, though it was only a public path connecting up the units of a swank motel, it possessed him as if he’d cut it out of the virgin bush himself.
What did he need with Walden, as long as he had this?
He would probably never be here again. But now that he’d had it all to himself three times—in twilight, torrent, and midday sun—it seemed like nothing could take it away. He’d always thought he could only possess what little he kept around him, the closer the better. Now he was pretty sure it went the other way. He most nearly owned the bits of life that came in flashes and were gone. Like a length of northern forest, or a boy like Harry Dawes.
He came out of the trees and headed down the long hill toward his cabin. Less and less, he realized, was he troubled by the circuitous route the investigation took. He hadn’t really begun with the thought of defying all convention. Two weeks ago, in Harry’s room, when he stood robbed of the chance to fall in love, he must have longed for the straightest line to lead him to the killer. Only it turned out there was too much else to uncover along the way. If the god of vengeance wanted his sentences merciless and swift, he had picked the wrong detective to exact them.
There was no other car but his on the gravel beside his porch, so it wasn’t until he got quite close that he noticed something wrong. The door was ajar. It must be the maid, he thought at first, though he knew she didn’t come till late in the afternoon. Perhaps he’d left it open himself. But really, try to convince an agoraphobe that he hadn’t locked up before he went out. There wasn’t a neighborhood on earth folksy enough for unlocked doors.
He did a quick cut to the left and ducked behind the cabin. He hugged the rear wall and inched to the corner, peeking before he turned. Then he crept down under the window and came up slow, like a periscope.
He must have known he wouldn’t get out without a second meeting. The gray-eyed monk from Carbon Mountain sat in the Windsor chair by the hearth, reading what looked like his breviary. Greg would rather have found him going through the luggage. He supposed they were meant to have the morning-after weighing of souls. The boy would doubtless tell him he wasn’t really gay. He might even, given the sanctimony that presently bathed his face, plead with Greg to turn from the darkness while he yet had time.
It was the very reason Greg hadn’t bothered to look at Harry twice. Twenty-five and under, men were kids. They did up their sex with guilt and self-absorption—anything not to grow up. They secretly feared there was certain death on the other side of the carnal act. They hemmed and hawed and didn’t know what the fuck they wanted.
Greg was hopping mad. He didn’t owe the time of day to other men’s illusions. Having gone so far for Harry, thousands of miles in a single week, he’d paid his debt to nice ideals and pipe dreams, once and for all. It had taken him half his life to believe he could go get laid like anyone else. Who did this dreary think he was, obsessing about a minor brief encounter? Who cared if it made him sad?
If the kid had only looked up then, he would have seen Greg not two paces off, framed in the window, scowling. They might have come together and had it out, setting the record straight as to who did what to whom. Greg didn’t wait to see. He dropped to a crouch and vanished out of the other’s line of sight. Then he waddled along to the corner, rose to his feet, and made a break for the way he’d come, uphill and into the sun. Damn it all, he thought as he reached the trees again, it wasn’t his affair.
So here he was, back in the woods already. It went to show the things one truly loved were never gone for good. Conversely, Greg couldn’t think of a single thing in his cabin he couldn’t happily leave behind. It amounted to half a bag of tropical clothes that made him look like a duped tourist. As for the Dodge, somebody up at the inn would sooner or later get it back to Hertz. He wasn’t remotely interested just now in the trouble a man got into, ignoring the orthodox methods. Screw all that.
“But where’s your stuff?” she asked in some confusion, when he loped across the field again. She was putting her own bag in the trunk.
“This is all I really need,” he said, hunching the woolen shoulders of his shirt.
“Gee, and I thought I was a light packer. What about your car?”
“Could we just get out of here?”
Of course. She beckoned him in without another word, then backed and turned and headed out. They stopped at the inn, where they dropped their keys and paid in full. Greg owed ninety dollars for three nights running, Vivien a hundred and thirty for one. It gave him a rough idea what it cost to have birchwood logs on the fire and rain gear hung in the closet. Coming out to the car again, they flipped a coin to see who’d drive. Vivien won the toss. He made a mental note not to bet with her at cards.
She did without maps entirely, while he, who loved them all—from bus routes to folio atlas—had left his own in the Dodge. Worse still, she had no apparent route. She seemed to make do with any road that came to hand and headed south. He tried to put it out of his mind till it came around to his turn. At which point, he would stop at the very first service station and get all the data he needed. For now, he rested his head against the window and looked across three counties.
They ran for half an hour through a north-south valley hollowed out by a glacier, with a perfectly beveled slope on either side. He was getting a cosmic picture of the ice, as it shouldered its way between two ranges, when he caught a glimpse of coursing water beyond the roadside brush. So that’s what it is, he thought: The river. The same as bore the eight men down to a fatal crossroads ten years past. How little he really understood the flow of forces. If he couldn’t tell, in the valleys he traversed, an ice cut from a river cut, how did he ever expect to follow out the trails of vanished men?
“How far do you think it is?” she asked.
“New York? About four hours.”
“No—Walden Pond.”
He looked at her sidelong, to get some clue in the squint of her eye. She had a finger pointed at his lap—where, much to his chagrin, he found he was cradling Thoreau, flipping the pages aimlessly. He hadn’t been conscious of slipping it out of his pocket. Now he was caught in the act. He laid it down between them on the seat and edged it closer to her.
“Who knows?” he answered, bored at the mere idea. But the words were scarcely out of his mouth before he was hit with an opposite whim, to show what he knew of the lay of the land. “Say an hour south and three hours east.”
“Really? As close as that? It’s almost worth a detour.”
All this got her was half a mile of silence.
“Wouldn’t you like to see it?” she asked.
“Not especially.”
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“You’d rather I didn’t talk about it, right?”
“I don’t care,” he said wearily, wishing he had a map to see how far the road kept pace with the river.
“Yes, you do. We’ll change the subject. Tell me about your movies.”
“You must be thinking of someone else. I never did a movie.”
“Well, your scripts, then.”
“Oh, them,” he scoffed. “Didn’t you know—there’s an epidemic. The girl at the dry cleaner’s got three scripts. The bag boys at Ralph’s spend half their money on their Xerox bill.”
“Didn’t you write some comedy?” she asked. “Didn’t somebody option it?”
He exploded: “Why don’t you tell me? I gather it’s part of my file.”
“Listen, honey,” Vivien said, “I’m sorry you never made it. Don’t let it turn you into a prick. Okay?”
Okay. He counted to ten, or thereabouts. Relieved to be rid of this whiny brand of sensitive that made him cringe when he saw it in anyone else. She’d gotten too close for comfort. Seemed to know how he got to sleep on sleepless nights: still fashioning scenes and great locations, adding fresh snippets of dialogue, though he hadn’t had them out of the drawer in two and a half years. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Vivien’s bad opinion. She’d probably love them. Then what? Why undo his two good years of getting slowly better every day?
“Option is far too grand,” he said. He kept an eye on the trees outside, to cover his line of retreat if he found his confession getting out of hand. “Guy paid me twenty-five thousand to rewrite one of my scripts. Make it funny, he says. What the hell, I was broke. I would have made it a western, to pull in that kind of money.” And he shrugged in such a way that his shoulders stayed up till he finished speaking. “Didn’t matter. By the time I was done, he had a better deal, and I got shelved. End of story.”
“But don’t you see,” she said, who had all the deals she needed, “that’s what I want to hear. Tell me the story.”
