Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  “Okay,” she said.

  I thought for a second.

  “He’s not gonna come and hurt you, is he?”

  “No,” Donna said. “I took my daughter and we’re at my sister’s. He doesn’t come here. My sister’d kill him. She told him. My brother-in-law, he’s, like, this really big hunter, and he’s got all these rifles. My sister told Jeff if he ever set foot on her property, she’d blow his head off. She would, too.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Donna paused.

  “So I just thought I’d tell you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I’m sorry, Mr. McMorrow.”

  “It’s Jack.”

  “Sorry, Jack,” Donna said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, worrying like hell.

  “So I’ll be talking to you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Take it easy,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  I hung up the phone and pulled on my jeans. I took a T-shirt out of the drawer and pulled it on and went down the stairs.

  Roxanne was reading a magazine. She didn’t look up.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Who was that?” Roxanne said, still reading.

  “Oh, some woman I met at court. She was there to get a protection order on her paranoid maniac boyfriend. She told him about talking to me and he said he’s going to kill her and kill me. Maybe not in that order.”

  Roxanne looked up.

  “So what’s he going to do? Go to the newspaper and make a scene?”

  I thought for a minute, trying to think of a benign way to put it.

  “No, she told him I lived out here. In Prosperity, I mean. He said he’d come out here and find me.”

  “Would he really?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt it. Probably go in search of another eight-ball and forget I ever existed.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a needle in a haystack?”

  “She said he knows people out here. Has an uncle in Palermo or someplace.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who called.”

  “Donna.”

  “You gave her your number?”

  “Probably shouldn’t have. It was her sister—she has this vigilant, protective sister. She wanted to know where to reach me, and I could picture somebody at the paper saying they’d never heard of me. They’d think I was some weirdo or something. And it’s hard. You’re asking them to bare their souls and you hide behind this wall. I’ve always had trouble with that.”

  Roxanne had put the magazine down. It was a Newsweek. The new one. She looked worried.

  “So you think this could be a problem?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not. These guys are ninety-nine percent talk.”

  Roxanne got up. I took her by the shoulders and kissed her gently. She kissed me once and stopped.

  “You want tea?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Want to be on my toes for Willie the wife beater.”

  “And we need to talk,” Roxanne said.

  There was something ominous in her voice, in her walk.

  Roxanne got mugs from the cupboard, lit the burner under the kettle. I went to the front window and looked out. It was a moonless night, a good night to stand out in the yard and look at the stars.

  With a gun.

  The kettle rattled and Roxanne took it off the burner and poured. She had instant coffee, milk and sugar. I had Twinings English Breakfast, black. She brought the mugs over and set them down on the table, which was made of stained and battered oak planks. The tea spilled and she wiped the wood with a dish towel. As if it mattered.

  “There’s something we need to talk about,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs again. It was hard to talk when she crossed her legs.

  “You’re pregnant,” I said, sitting down beside her.

  “No.”

  “You’re not pregnant.”

  “No.”

  “No?” I said. “That means yes, and if the answer is yes, I volunteer to stay home while you work.”

  “Jack. This is serious.”

  “Okay, I’ll give it to you in writing.”

  “Jack, I’ve been offered a job.”

  “But you just started with the school district.”

  “This job is in Portland.”

  “That is serious,” I said.

  And not funny, I thought.

  “John called from Child Protective. He said Don Boulette is leaving. You remember Don?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, he always had this massive caseload, and they want somebody to take it over rather than spreading it out among a whole bunch of people temporarily.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I want to take the job.”

  “But I don’t want to move,” I said. “I like it here.”

  Roxanne looked at me and didn’t smile. It started to sink in.

  “You’re leaving?” I said.

  “I’ll be back, Jack.”

  “Last time you left you went to Colorado and didn’t come back for seven months.”

  “You didn’t ask me to come back. You didn’t even ask me to stay before I left, remember?”

  “Temporary insanity. And fear. I’m sorry. You know that now, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And I love you. You know that.”

  “Yeah. And I love you.”

  She looked at me, her eyes deep and thoughtful.

  “I do love you,” Roxanne said. “That’s why it was so important for us to make love tonight. And then your little friend called. But I wanted to make love because I’m not leaving you. It’s just a job. It’s more what I do than this school counseling. I’ll work down there during the week. Maybe I’ll get on a four-day week and that’ll give us three days together. I’ll come up. You can come down.”

  It sunk in deeper, like a knife blade.

  “You’re not planning on commuting?”

  “Jack, it’s an hour and a half. I can’t do that. Besides . . .”

  “Besides what?”

  “I don’t know, Jack. I love you and I want to be with you. I do. But I’m not sure what I’d do here.”

  “We’ll do what we do. We make love a lot. I worship you and you laugh at my jokes. It’s an even trade.”

  “But, Jack . . .”

  “You’ve only been here four months. And the summer is coming. The garden’ll come in and we’ll explore around. You like Mary and Clair. They’re right up the road.”

  “Jack, I’m not Mary. I can’t just stay here and can vegetables.”

  “So we’ll get a freezer.”

  “Jack, I’m serious,” Roxanne said.

  “Okay. No freezer. We’ll eat out. Millie’s Ridge View has great french fries and gravy. You’ve said so yourself.”

  Roxanne looked at me somberly.

  “Jack, no.”

  I paused. Sipped my tea. It tasted harsh and acidic.

  “Is it the drinking?” I said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. I just don’t want to see you waste your potential, all your talents.”

  “But doesn’t it beat not seeing me at all?”

  Roxanne put her mug on the table and turned to me. She took my hand and held it.

  “We need different things,” Roxanne said.

  “We’ll take up bowling. A couples’ league. Get his-and-her Harleys. They make this gal’s model, I heard. Has a makeup mirror and everything. And I’ll get you a little carbine to go with my thirty-aught-six. We’ll get hunting licenses.”

  “Jack, stop. I’m serious. We can make this work.”

  I paused.

  “Of course we can,” I said. “If your mind’s made up.”

  “I think it is.”

  “So you want my advice, right? Well, Roxanne, I’d say y
ou should consider taking that job. I mean, don’t turn it down out of hand. Give it some careful thought. Weigh the pros and cons.”

  “I start Monday,” Roxanne said.

  “There must have been a lot of pros,” I said.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I’m going to need to know that.”

  “I was trying to show you.”

  “When we were so rudely interrupted,” I said.

  “And now I’m exhausted. I’ve been up since five.”

  “Chatting with some maniac.”

  “They’re everywhere, aren’t they?” Roxanne said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They are.”

  So Roxanne went back up the stairs to the loft. The bedsprings creaked again, but this time only once. I bagged the tea and got a beer from the refrigerator and sat in the big chair by the front window. After a few minutes, very few, I heard a clunk. Roxanne’s book had hit the floor. I went to the bottom of the loft stairs and turned out the light. The house was in darkness. I finished that beer and went for another. I sipped it and listened to the bugs and the birds. It looked as if I was going to have a lot of time for the birds.

  I felt as though my life, such as it was, was unraveling. Roxanne wasn’t supposed to leave. She was supposed to stay and grow gray with me in the country. We’d hide away from the world in this little hamlet in the lost hills of Waldo County, Maine. We’d tromp around the woods, make love in little clearings in the pines. At night, we’d have a glass of wine, an ale or two, and then tea and then read, knowing that all we needed to be content was each other. Well, almost all.

  Hey, but things didn’t ever go the way they were planned. My day at the Observer was spent playing the washed-up major leaguer for the Single A club in Kennebec, Maine. I tried to do a simple story, and even that got complicated. All those years in New York City, I never got a scratch. One day on the job in Kennebec and some drunken, coked-out redneck said he was going to kill me. At the rate I was going, I’d be racking up two death threats a week. You could cover the drug trade for the Miami Herald and sleep better.

  I sipped the beer. Listened to the rush of sound from the woods. A cacophony, really, from the swarming, rustling, writhing darkness. Bats, only lately evicted from our rafters, swooped close to the screen. There was a soft, murmuring hoot. A mourning dove disturbed on its roost. A billion stars flickering over this wilderness. A set of headlights that bumped down the road.

  And stopped.

  7

  The truck was big and loud, with lights high off the ground. I heard at least two people, maybe three. The exhaust throbbed slowly and then there was a short rev and the truck started moving again, rolled ahead about fifty feet, and stopped. The motor quieted. The lights went out. Both doors opened but didn’t shut.

  I got up from the chair and stepped to the side of the window. I could hear footsteps on the gravel. The footsteps drew closer, then softened on the grass in front of the house.

  “You think this is it?” a guy’s voice said.

  “The lady said an old red Toyota four-wheel-drive,” another voice said. “There it is.”

  “Let’s get him outside,” a third voice said. “I don’t need another B and E.”

  “You and your friggin’ record,” one of them said. “Friggin’ wuss.”

  They were twenty feet from the front of the house. I stepped carefully to the closet, eased the latch up, and drew it open. From behind the jackets and coats, I took out the thirty-aught-six. Clair’s Remington on long-term loan.

  Outside, one of them called, “Hey.”

  I hurried to the kitchen and opened a cupboard. Pushed the Ajax and Windex aside and found the box of shells. Slid the top back and picked five out, jacking four into the magazine and one into the breech.

  “Hey, writer man. Come on out,” one of them was saying. “Come on out, you little writer pussy. Wanna talk to you.”

  I walked to the window and looked. The three of them were on the edge of the grass. The one in the middle was doing the talking.

  “Reporter pussy. Come on out.”

  I heard Roxanne roll out of bed.

  “Jack, what is it?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Stay up there and don’t turn on any lights.”

  “Jack?”

  “No lights. Stay there.”

  I walked to the door, eased it open. The door was to the right of the house. The thing that looked like a door in the center of the house was really a window. They were standing in front of it, like deranged carolers. I leaned the gun against the wall and stepped out onto the grass. I felt that rising tingle of fear, but they were like mean dogs. I couldn’t let fear show.

  “Car trouble, guys?” I said.

  There were just the three of them. Assorted sizes, all within the big range. Jeans. T-shirts. Two beards. No guns in sight. At least one knife, showing on the middle guy’s belt.

  “You the reporter pussy?” the one in the middle said. He was bearded, with long dark hair.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And if you guys are some of those religious types, I’m really not interested. Not that I don’t keep my own faith. I do. It’s just that, well, I like to think that’s between my God and—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying that, religion or no religion, I’d prefer that you come by at a more reasonable hour. And call first. Because I’m out a lot and I’d hate to have you drive all the way out here just to—”

  “Shut the friggin’ hell up.”

  He stood in the middle. The two bookends were at his side, looking amused.

  “You’re not here from the church?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Oh, you are here from the church.”

  “I’m here about Donna.”

  “Why, was she in an accident?”

  “No, but you’re gonna have one.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “It don’t matter,” he said.

  “You’re Jeff, and it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have religion, at least have decent grammar.”

  “He thinks he’s friggin’ funny,” one of the bookends said.

  I looked at him. His T-shirt advertised vodka. He looked as if he’d downed a pitcher of martinis with a two-gram chaser.

  “I don’t think I’m funny,” I said. “I think it’s funny that you’re here. Funny odd. Not funny ha-ha.”

  “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Jeff said, tilting his head back in a tough-guy look he’d seen in some video. “I don’t know what the bitch told you, but you’re not gonna put it in the paper. You’re not gonna write one word. And that lying bitch is gonna learn that she ain’t gonna go around town saying shit about me.”

  “What are you going to do? Bite her on the tum-tum again?”

  He paused.

  “She told you that?”

  “She showed me that.”

  “That friggin’ slut.”

  “The judge didn’t think so,” I said. “Neither will any of the other people who’ll read the paper tomorrow.”

  “You’re gonna call ’em up and tell ’em to stop the story.”

  “Too late. How ’bout I call the subscribers in the morning. All twelve thousand of them.”

  What better time to fudge circulation numbers.

  “I’m gonna break your fingers,” Jeff said.

  “That’s aggravated assault. You want to do a year inside?”

  “Worth it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I said. “You don’t have a future. You know, that’s the problem with the criminal justice system. It levies punishments based on middle-class values. But the perpetrators often don’t hold those values; therefore the penalty holds no punishment value at all. This is something our society must come to grips with if—”

  “I’m gonna friggin’ destroy you.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We must read the same journals.”

  Jeff took a step forward.
He was wide-eyed but his eyes were glazed. Too many beers, too much cocaine. The bookends took a step forward too.

  “Did you guys learn that with those footprints you stick on the floor?” I said.

  They took another step. I tensed, heard my voice like it belonged to someone else.

  “I didn’t say Simon says,” I said, and in the darkness to my left there was a movement.

  “Jack, you want me to call the police?” Roxanne said.

  The bearded bookend looked over.

  “Oh, man,” he said, grinning. “You can have this guy, boys. I’m gonna go chat with the babe. Oh, I bet you’re not wearing anything under that, are you, honey? Let’s just check and make sure.”

  He took two steps toward the door. I took three to the rifle, picked it up, and turned to where all three of them had stopped. Instantly.

  “Go back in,” I told Roxanne.

  “I bet the reporter pussy don’t even know what to do with that thing,” the bearded guy said.

  He took two more steps toward the door. And Roxanne. I pointed the rifle at the bookend’s head, lifted it six inches, and fired. The gun roared like a howitzer. The bullet missed his head by three feet and headed for Belfast. The fear showed in his eyes.

  “Beat it,” I said.

  Jeff was frozen, not even breathing.

  I jacked out the empty cartridge and slid the bolt forward, then pointed the rifle at his head. Then I wheeled to my right and fired. The back window of the truck shattered before I’d stopped squeezing the trigger. I turned back to Jeff.

  “That’s for Donna,” I said. “And me, too. I don’t like bullies. Especially dumb ones. And you’re dumb as a post.”

  “You’re not always gonna have that gun, man,” Jeff said.

  “But I have it now. And that’s all that matters. Go.”

  They went, backing away ten steps before turning their backs to me. The bookend without the beard held his hands up as he eased around me. They got in the truck and I could see the bearded bookend start to brush glass off the seat.

  “Just get in the friggin’ truck, man,” the other one snapped. “Get in the friggin’ truck.”

  Jeff started the motor with a defiant roar, backed it into the ditch, and then gunned it out. As he went by he looked at me, still standing by the house with the rifle cradled in my arms.

  “It ain’t over,” he called.

  “Isn’t,” I called back.