The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Donovan didn’t say anything. Didn’t think there was much point.

  Jilly sniffed. Sniffed again and groaned. “Can you smell that?” He realized that he had been smelling it ever since they sat down. Smoke. “Those one-percenters out there are torching my farm right now.”

  “One-percenters?”

  “Yeah. Satan’s Pagans. The S-Pops, I call them: Satan’s Pissed-Off Pagans. That’s who we’re up against.”

  Donovan thought about the “we” in her statement of war, but he didn’t have much time to give it his full attention because next thing he knew she was in his face. She’d leaned in — one leaping shadow across the tunnel — and grabbed his shirtfront in her fist. “Level with me,” she said.

  “Honest, I don’t —”

  “I don’t want to hear ‘I don’t.’” She shook him like a rag doll.

  “Okay, okay. That guy in the Camaro —”

  “No, not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Murphy.”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The guy playing cards with my brother and Oscar. Who is he? Murphy wasn’t his real name. Just something Oscar Shouldice came up with for the benefit of the cops.” Donovan nodded, and although it was pitch-dark, she was close enough to register the gesture. “So, is he who I think he is?”

  “He’s Allen Ian McGeary. My father.”

  She let go of his shirtfront. “Yeah, thought it might be.” She threw herself back against the earthen wall. “I only caught a glimpse of him. I tend to keep out of the way when the rye and cards come out. God, has he ever gone to seed.”

  Donovan stared at her, and in the almost total darkness a memory began to stir.

  “So, did you kill him or not?” she said.

  “I . . . I don’t remember. I guess I must have. I mean he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Most certainly.” She laughed dryly. “But I can’t help thinking he’s taken a long time getting around to it.”

  Donovan swallowed. “You knew him,” he said.

  “I knew him. Knew you, too, kid,” she added.

  “We came here,” said Donovan. “When I was little.”

  “See, I told you. It’s coming back, right?”

  Coming back wasn’t how Donovan would have put it. Thawing, maybe. Slowly. Very slowly.

  “No?” said Jilly. “Oh well. Anyway, that’s what brought Al here, I guess. And so that’s what brought you here after him and then that brought those one-percenters here after you. Which is why —”

  “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

  “You stole the Pagans’ money less than one mile from my operation, which is why the cops came around earlier, followed by the S-Pops. Wouldn’t be surprised if the cops tipped them off: torching our operation would save them a whole lot of paperwork and taxpayers’ money. The cops like it best when the enemy neutralize one another. You know what I mean?”

  He didn’t. He was hopelessly lost.

  “Well,” she said with a sigh. “There’s nothing else to do. We had to get the money one way or another.”

  There was silence. Nothing more to say. And then into the silence that had permeated Donovan’s mind crept a feeling of terrible uncertainty that he had to share with somebody. “I’m not sure if I did it. Killed my father.”

  “Oh, here we go —”

  “No! It’s not what you think. I’m not trying to worm out of it. It’s just I can’t piece it all together, what happened.”

  He expected her to chastise him again, but she remained quiet. After a moment, Donovan closed his eyes, which had the effect of setting free a tear that was waiting there. He felt it course down his cheek.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m dead, too, aren’t I.”

  She didn’t speak for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “You’re a traveler in a land that is part memory, part dream, and with all the vestiges of the kind of pain only the living can feel.”

  He wasn’t sure what to make of what she said other than to take a little bit of hope and courage from her words. Was that why Al had laughed like that as he stumbled off into the night? Was it because after all those years of “feeling no pain,” finally he really wasn’t feeling any pain? He let out a ragged breath and then the quiet closed around them.

  And then into the quiet came the sound of motorcycles starting up: one, two, three, and then too many to count. They were going. The sound of them leaving came closer and closer as they turned out of the yard and headed north on the concession road toward the highway. In only a moment they were passing so nearby, the tunnel door actually shook and Donovan covered his head expecting the passageway to cave in from the vibrations.

  Then they were gone. Jilly pushed open the low door and they both scurried out into the moonlit night. They were standing in a little copse of ironwood trees and dense, tangled shrubbery, mostly prickly ash, hard by the split-rail fence that bordered the eastern end of the property. The moon was low on the horizon now, and there was a hint of false dawn. Birds were starting to sing in the trees above their heads. But there was a sound much louder than the birds, a crackling noise, a splintering noise. Turning toward the farm they saw the flames: the house, the shed — it was all going up in smoke and cinders, pulsing red like a heart ripped live from the earth.

  There was no way to pull a U-turn on Wilton — too narrow — so Bee was forced to drive the length of it, which meant passing the dog walkers. Nor could she pass them at speed. It would be a blasphemy to drive too fast, here of all places, not to mention deadly trying to make the turn onto Oakland. The outcome was not surprising. One of the men made a fist at her as she passed, his face red with indignation. The other called after her, words she could barely hear because of the throbbing of blood in her ears. She was heading along Oakland, which curved up toward Bank Street, when she thought about what he had said.

  Someone died here last night.

  What did he know? Bastard! Then suddenly she slammed on the brakes. Had there been news? She hadn’t even thought to check the radio. She gulped in air as if suddenly the car was a bell jar. She clung to the steering wheel. She had her phone. She could Google it. But she just sat there not wanting to know.

  No one would have contacted her. She was nobody. Just the girlfriend. It was coming on a year, this unlikely union: theater girl and jock boy. He was all about basketball in winter and baseball in summer. Balls. It was all about balls: chasing them and hitting them and heaving them into things and running, running, running. But he wasn’t just a jock. “Is anybody just one anything, really?” he had said to her early on.

  “A wise jock,” she’d said, and watched the temper brew on his face until he realized she was teasing him.

  He’d come to see her last show and raved about it. Insisted she was the star, no matter that she was never seen. “Those curtains opened, like, perfect. And the lights — I couldn’t take my eyes off the lights.”

  “Shut up,” she’d said, weak from laughter.

  “There was this prop — what was it? Oh yeah, the bowl of fruit. I knew, soon as I saw it, you’d put it in the guy’s hand. It was so . . . so there.”

  “I don’t do everything,” she said. “There’s a team.”

  “But you’re the captain, right?”

  She liked that: captain. When she was stage managing him, he’d call her that: Captain Northway.

  He read books she recommended and wanted to talk about them. He had thoughts he wanted to think. He had a wonky sense of humor. And, yes, he was gorgeous, lithe and strong and gentle. He was a boy who could have easily rested on his laurels — his prowess on the field or court, his well-sculpted ass. But he wanted to make something of himself. Be someone.

  “You’ve come to the right person,” she’d said. “I’m all about ‘be.’”

  It only took a moment for the smile to blossom on his face. “Cool,” he had said, nodding. “And I’m all about ‘do.’ We’re perfect.”

  A car beeped, and loo
king in her rearview mirror Bee realized she was holding up traffic. She waved and the car beeped again.

  “Prick.”

  She put the car back in gear and puttered up to Bank, deliberately slowly. She waited at the stop sign, too long, until Mr. In-an-Almighty-Hurry-on-a-Saturday-Morning beeped at her again. Then she turned south toward the hospital.

  Be and Do — Bee and Turn: a perfect couple? No. Because there was Turn’s shadow self. His temper. He hated it. Hated that he lost it so easily. He was working on it, he swore. But whatever had happened last night, one person was dead and another was hanging on for dear life. Somewhere in all of that was Shadow Donovan.

  She could not and would not believe he could have killed anyone. But if he had — if it was an accident, say, or . . . well, she didn’t know what. If it was true, then she knew what would happen next, when he lost it and then came back to the land of the living: his remorse, his shame.

  Enough to step in front of a truck?

  She shook her head. No, she wouldn’t believe it. He loved life way too much.

  She was tired. Not like the way she was tired last night. More like existentially tired. She had slept soundly enough but only for four hours. And now, because her spirits had fallen, she was immediately reminded of the journal. She had written a lot about Donovan and Shadow Donovan in that little maroon Moleskine, and without having to reread it she knew there was enough there to convince anyone he was capable of doing damage to his father. She didn’t believe it. And it wasn’t just mindless loyalty, either. There was a deep goodness in Donovan that would stop him short. She was sure of it. She gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  Killed him.

  He’d said that.

  She couldn’t think about it. Not now. It was too frightening.

  She pulled up to a red light at Riverdale. And sitting there, suddenly a terrible, terrible thought occurred to her. His bat. He’d been at baseball practice. He’d have had his lucky bat with him. We’ve got a chaotic crime scene. We’ve got witnesses to say there was more than one violent interchange.

  Bee took a deep breath. A sob caught in her throat. She pressed her fist to her lips. Tried to force from her mind the image of Turn with a bat in his hand, swinging in a huge arc.

  No. Regroup. Another deep breath.

  “Act two,” she said. “Places everybody.”

  The red light changed to green and she pulled onto the bridge across the Rideau. The sky was growing darker. Bee watched the cloud shadows lengthen on the turgid water of the river. She leaned forward to look up through the windshield at God, assuming he was up yet. “No pathetic fallacy, thank you very much!”

  “What do you mean I can’t go in?”

  The new ICU nurse’s name was Winters. No first name on her tag. Probably “Frigida.”

  “You’re not on the list,” said Winters for the second time, as if maybe Bee were hard of hearing. She flipped the pages on a clipboard. Back and forth, back and forth. “You’re family?”

  “Not exactly. But I’m the only ‘family’ he’s got right now, until his mother gets here.”

  Winters straightened up, cracked her back. “Can’t help you,” she said. “Rules are rules.”

  “Gerry Ocampo can vouch for me.”

  “Geraldine Ocampo is a nurse.”

  “And the lady at the desk, the unit clerk. I don’t remember her name.”

  “And who’s not on duty now. Anyway, I need a doctor’s say-so.”

  “Well he did say so,” said Bee.

  “What doctor?”

  Bee pressed her fists against her forehead, not surprised to find that it was throbbing now. “I can’t remember. He was hardly here.”

  “Dr. Choy?”

  “Yes! Dr. Brian Choy.”

  Nurse Winters shook her head. “He didn’t leave instructions.”

  “But he told Gerry when I was there that it was okay.”

  “Well, he should have signed off. Sorry.” She turned to go.

  “No, wait,” said Bee. “Dr. Choy said the patient was unstable and that’s why it was okay to be there. Because . . . Because he might not make it.”

  Winters frowned. “You do realize that poor lad has suffered major cervical-spine trauma.”

  “I know that. But he was talking.”

  Winters raised her eyebrow with impressive disbelief.

  “He was,” said Bee.

  “Well, that may be so, but he’s certainly not talking now.” Somehow Bee didn’t believe Winters. Her eyes gave her away.

  “You have to really listen,” Bee said, and earned a wintery glare.

  “Miss Northway. I can assure you he won’t be talking now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What’s happened?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you. It would be violating patient confidentiality.”

  “I had clearance last night.”

  “That may be so, but all I’ll say to you now is that he’s stabilized.”

  “I think —”

  “This isn’t about you. What you think or need is of no consequence right now.”

  “He was trying to tell me something. He is still talking, isn’t he?”

  “Not in any discernable way.”

  “The cops,” snapped Bee. “Two detectives asked me to monitor anything he said. They’re trying to find out who ran him down.”

  “Please lower your voice.”

  “Sorry. Ma’am. Nurse.”

  “When Mr. Turner recovers, your detectives can take all the time they want with him. My job is to help him do that — recover — and right now he needs as much peace and quiet as he can possibly get. Unless otherwise instructed, he is to be left alone. Now I’m sorry, but I’ve got work to do.” She turned to leave yet again.

  “Nurse Winters?” The nurse stopped but didn’t turn. Probably building up an icy blast with which to transform Bee into a snowgirl. Slowly she pivoted from the waist.

  Bee held up her journal. “He did speak. Really. I wrote down what he said. The cops asked me to.” It was a bent truth more than an untruth. Bee pulled from her journal’s pages two business cards. “The detectives who were here last night,” she said, holding up the cards for Winters’s inspection. For the briefest of moments, Bee thought the detectives’ business cards had trumped everything. Wrong.

  The nurse approached Bee, ignoring the cards held out to her, her gaze fixed implacably on the girl. “I’m sorry that your boyfriend was in an accident. I’m sorry he is in my intensive care unit. Now I would like you to leave.”

  “But —”

  “When his mother gets here, she can decide whether you may enter. Until then, I’d thank you to let health-care professionals do what we’re paid to do.”

  She held Bee’s gaze another few seconds, daring her to blurt so much as another word so that she would have the excuse to Taser her. Bee held her gaze without apology and without tears. Finally, the woman left.

  Bee stood there shaking, not sure if she would scream or just implode. Through a supreme act of will, she stayed where she was, banking on the fact that Winters would not turn around a second time. She didn’t seem like a woman who was used to being disobeyed. Bee waited, stock-still, until the only other nurse in the vicinity moved on to some other soul on life support and the unit manager was digging in her filing cabinet and the old volunteer gentleman who had greeted Bee at the door was busy greeting someone else, and then she took a deep breath and made a beeline to Donovan’s room.

  And so, like some failure in evolution, they headed back to the swamp. They recovered the money first. “What happened?” said Jilly, seeing the half-empty briefcase.

  Donovan shrugged. “My dad,” he said.

  She nodded. “Figures.” She stuffed the remaining bills into her backpack and, when that was full, her pockets. Then she chucked the briefcase into the trash heap and they trudged down toward the slime.

  “Look,” said Donovan, stopping at the edge of the woods. “I’m goi
ng to hit the road, okay?”

  “Like hell you are,” said Jilly.

  “No, seriously. I’ve got to get back . . . you know. Home.”

  She looked him up and down. “Planning on hitching?” she asked. “Good luck.”

  She was right. He was a filthy wreck, an escapee from the quagmire — a bogman. “Look, I’ll walk if I have to.”

  She shook her head and moved on. “You set foot on that concession road, you’re dead meat.”

  He stared at the empty road not a hundred yards away, then turned back to her.

  “Did you happen to count the bikes leaving here?” He shook his head. “Well, there were ten. But there was an even dozen that were dispatched to do the deed.”

  Donovan swung his head toward the inferno. He saw no movement other than the flames trying to outdo one another at licking the sky. Then he turned to Jilly again. “Maybe they’re dead,” he said.

  She shook her head assuredly, as if she knew for sure. “They left a couple behind to clean up.”

  “But the cops will come, won’t they? A fire like that?”

  “You obviously weren’t listening to me,” she said. She smiled patiently and combed her fingers through her hair. “The cops won’t come until they’re good and ready. The firemen won’t come at all.” She surveyed the inferno and then reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a little container of Tic Tacs, sprinkled a couple into her hand, and then offered them to him. He took a couple. Breakfast. “See, around here,” she said, “the firefighters are all volunteers. Assuming anyone saw the flames — and that’s a big if — and assuming that this same anyone bothered to sound the alarm, they’d know whose place it was and just go back to bed. The ground’s good and wet, no chance of a brush fire spreading. That’s the only thing they’d be worried about.”

  Then before he could say anything more, she was off again and he had to scamper to keep up. The earth dragged at his every step.

  “Where are we headed?” he asked.

  “You’ll know when we get there,” said Jilly.