Go With Me Page 11

  “It looks like a school bus,” said Lillian.

  “It is a school bus,” said Lester. “They brought it in for a bunkhouse. That was after my time.”

  “They brought it here?” Lillian asked. “How? They didn’t drive it. How did they get it in here?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” said Lester. “Boyd didn’t do it. He was all done by then. Nobody’s logged in here in twenty years. More than that. It’s Blackway’s now.”

  They left the trail and crossed the waste toward the bus. The sawdust was peculiar underfoot: soft and silent, but unmarked. They might have been walking on a bed. They might have been walking on the surface of the moon.

  At the bus, Lester pushed open the doors and went up the steps past the driver’s seat. Lillian followed him. Entering the bus, she paused. The rows of passengers’ seats had been removed, and the rear two-thirds of the interior was taken up by three ranks of double-deck bunk beds hung on frames built of two-by-sixes. Forward of the bunks a wood-burning stove made from a fiftyfive-gallon drum with the pipe let out one of the side windows. Between the stove and the driver’s seat, in front, a small kitchen table and a single lawn chair, and on the table, an old railroad lantern painted red. The place was warm and close, smelling of sour ashes from the stove and, faintly, of kerosene.

  Lester had come up ahead of Lillian. He was looking over the bunks. A sleeping bag lay on one of them; the others were nothing but bare plywood platforms without mattresses or blankets. An old double-bitted ax leaned in one corner. There was nothing else. Blackway was by himself in there.

  “Don’t much go in for housekeeping, does he?” said Lester.

  “Is it really his place?” asked Lillian. “How do we know it is?”

  “It’s his,” said Lester. “Or if it ain’t, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “How?” asked Lillian. “We just sit in here and wait for him?”

  “Not in here,” said Lester. He turned to the door.

  “Wait a minute —” Lillian began again. But Lester had left the bus and was outside looking over the ground before and behind it. The sun was nearly down on the mountain ridges to the west. It sank into a broad, tranquil bay of low cloud suffused with vermillion, scarlet, and rose. Long shadows advanced from the hillocks of sawdust, darted from the surrounding woods. The windows of the bus flashed and flared with the final light. The farthest hills, blue, turned purple, then gray, then black.

  “We’ll need a fire,” said Lester. He dug in his pocket and came out with a book of matches, which he handed to Nate. “Make a good one,” Lester told him. “Keep it going.”

  Before the door of the bus was a fire ring of blackened stones. A small pile of wood stood beside it, with a camp grill on legs, and a camp teapot nearby.

  “What’s the sense of that?” Lillian asked him. “He’ll see it. He’ll know somebody’s here.”

  “That’s right,” said Lester. To Nate he said, “You best get more wood.”

  “Wait, Lester.” Lillian stopped him. “Just wait a minute, okay? We can’t do this. This isn’t going to work.”

  Lester turned to her. “No?” he said.

  “No,” said Lillian. “It won’t work. We need to get out of here.”

  “Can’t,” said Lester.

  “What do you mean, can’t?” Lillian demanded. “Why can’t we? Nobody’s here. We turn around and leave.”

  “No,” said Lester. “We told you back there: We’re down onto it. We’ve passed over. Now we got to go through.”

  “Why?” Lillian asked. “Because we took Blackway’s keys? So what? We’ll put them back. He won’t know.”

  Lester looked at her.

  “How will he know?” Lillian asked. “Are you saying he knows already? Are you saying he’s coming now?”

  “Go ahead,” Lester said to Nate. “Get the wood.” Lester had leaned his parcel against the bus when they went inside. Now he picked it up and turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Lillian. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” said Lester. “Not far.”

  Nate started walking toward the trees to find more wood.

  “This is another trick, isn’t it?” Lillian asked Lester.

  “This ain’t another trick,” Lester told her. “This is the last trick. After this, I’m all out of tricks. This one’s it. You better hope it works.”

  He left her.

  Someone had taken one of the old passengers’ seats from the bus and placed it before the fire ring. Lillian sat and waited for Nate to come back with the wood. Lester had disappeared around one of the sawdust hills. It was growing darker. Lillian was alone. She looked around her, above, behind. She got up and went to the corner of the bus. She peeped around the corner. Then she returned to the seat. The shadows spread, joined, the daylight departed. A single big star hung in the darkening sky over the black mountain rim. Lillian sat. She hugged herself and rocked back and forth a little. She waited for Nate.

  Blackway was coming. Was he there already, in the woods, watching her right now? No. But he was close. Lillian could feel him nearby, she could feel him as a current of cold wet air off a brook or pool. Blackway was coming, and Nate and Lester couldn’t, they wouldn’t, get out of his way. They had to go through. Blackway held her little cat in his hands and left her on the step like a bloody rag. He was coming, and when he’d gone over Nate and Lester and nobody was left but Lillian, what would he do then?

  Lillian held herself more tightly and looked into the fire.

  Nate returned dragging a little dead fir tree, the whole thing. He dropped it beside the fire ring. Then he went into the bus and came out with the ax. He began hewing branches off the fir. With Lester’s matches, he soon had a fire. As it caught and grew, the light failed entirely, and the night closed around them like a great dark hand.

  “What’s going to happen when he comes?” Lillian asked.

  Nate stood before the fire and stared into the flames. His eyes didn’t move, didn’t blink. He didn’t answer.

  “Nate?” Lillian asked.

  “Yo?”

  “What happens when he comes?”

  “Les?”

  “Blackway.”

  Nate continued to gaze into the fire. He shrugged.

  “I ain’t afraid of Blackway,” he said.

  Lillian shook her head. “You keep on saying that,” she said. “Sit down here, why don’t you?”

  “I’ll stand,” Nate said. He raised his eyes from the fire and looked at Lillian. He grinned.

  “I ain’t afraid of Blackway,” said Nate. “But since Les ain’t here, I’ll tell you I won’t be sorry when this is over.”

  “Come on,” said Lillian. “Sit.” She patted the seat beside her.

  “I don’t mind,” said Nate.

  “Poker game,” said Whizzer. “Five, six of us used to get together: D.B., myself, Wingate, whoever else was around.”

  “Wingate was a regular, though,” said D.B. “In fact, we mostly played at his place.”

  “Here, too,” said Whizzer.

  “But mainly at Wingate’s,” said D.B. “He rented a room at the old hotel in those days.”

  “Where was that?” Conrad asked.

  “Right there on the edge of town,” D.B. said. “Place that’s the candle shop now. Wingate had a room in the back. We went there to play more than here.”

  “Wingate had a better table,” said Whizzer. “And then, the hotel had a bar, so while you were playing you could order up a bunch of cold beers or a bottle of something to keep you sharp. It was more comfortable. Not everybody enjoys sitting around in here all day and all night.”

  “Don’t they?” asked Coop. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Anyway,” said D.B. “We’d play poker at Wingate’s. And one night there was this guy who used to sit in who thought he was something of a card shark.”

  “Lucky Jim,” said Whizzer.

  “Thought he was pretty cute,” said D.B. “A
nd he was, sort of. He knew the games. He knew the odds. He usually came out ahead. We called him Lucky Jim.”

  “Lucky Jim?” asked Conrad.

  “His real name was Hubert,” said Whizzer. “Some kind of an engineer. He worked on the power dam. Worked for the Corps of Engineers.”

  “He’s moved on,” said D.B. “Lucky Jim has. Nobody was too unhappy when he did. Some thought he used to help out his side a little. He had very fast hands.”

  “He didn’t mind if you thought that, either,” said Whizzer.

  “No, he didn’t,” said D.B. “That was part of his game, the idea that maybe he was helping himself a little in the deal but you weren’t sure. It was kind of like a little bluff he ran.”

  “So one night we’re at Wingate’s, and Lucky Jim deals out a hand of short stud,” said Whizzer.

  “Five-card,” said D.B. “There was Jim, Wingate, Whizzer, and me.”

  “Lucky Jim’s dealing,” said Whizzer. “Short stud game. He deals out four hands. And high man is himself with — what was it?”

  “Jack of Diamonds,” said D.B.

  Lester walked around the nearest of the sawdust hills and began to climb up to its top. On the soft ground he went silently. He wasn’t going far, but he didn’t want the other two to know that. He didn’t want them to know where he was. When Blackway showed up, surprise would be what Lester had. It would be about all he had, and surprise means nobody’s to know. Not your side, not the other side, nobody.

  From the top of the little hill he looked down at one end of the bus, fifty feet away. He could just see Lillian sitting before the fire ring. Nate had gone for wood. He was out of sight. This spot was no good. You couldn’t see the ground in front of the bus. You couldn’t see, and the bus was too far away. Lester now saw he would need to be no farther than a few yards from the fire ring when Blackway came. Closer would be better. That meant inside the bus — or, better, it meant up on the roof. The roof was the best place for what he had to do. Blackway, when he came, might know he was into something more here than a couple of kids. He would know it. He would be looking around for trouble. But Lester would be right on top of him, and Blackway wouldn’t be looking up.

  Lester didn’t think he could climb onto the top of the bus without Nate and Lillian’s knowing he was up there. He’d have to wait till Blackway appeared, till he and Nate had gotten into it. That way, maybe none of them would hear him. Meantime he’d have to get closer to the bus, around the other side. For that he’d have to wait for full dark. He watched Nate drag the tree out of the woods and start trimming the branches with the ax. Lester had a little time. He waited.

  He tried to recall the big yard at Boyd’s. Was this it? It might have been. You couldn’t tell. It was different then. No sawdust. Boyd hadn’t had a mill. The logs they’d cut over the winter they’d driven out down the river in the spring. So, no sawdust desert. And no bus. Boyd had had a log bunkhouse. Boyd also had stables, a kitchen, a shop, but if anything was left of any of them today, and if this was where they had stood, then the sawdust covered them.

  Directly across the open ground from Lester’s position, a big pine tree rose thirty feet above the tops of the younger growth surrounding it. There had been a big one behind the bunkhouse at Boyd’s. Was that the same tree? Lester couldn’t tell from here. Up close, he might know it. The men had left that tree standing for a purpose — if you believed them. It wasn’t just another pine, they told the young Lester. It was a woods wife. A what? There was a knothole in the trunk, they’d told him, at just the right height for — well, try it yourself, kid. Fifty men stuck out there in the woods all winter. Not old men, either. Nothing to do but work and eat and sleep. No women. How much checkers can you play? You got to feel like you couldn’t stand it any longer. Then, they told Lester, what you did, you gave some business to your woods wife. You got a handful of lard from the kitchen, you got that knothole greased up pretty good, and you went right at it. Woods wives, they called those convenient trees, or pussy pines. If you believed them.

  Lester didn’t believe them. Though it was true some of those old boys, some of those old-time choppers, were different. You could say they were colorful. You could say they were individuals. The point was, if they didn’t carry on with the trees, it wasn’t because they thought doing so was in poor taste.

  They took a good look at Lester, too, didn’t they, when he joined the crew at Boyd’s: only a kid, small, curly-headed, and cute as a cricket? Yes, they had looked him over pretty close. First night, Boyd himself had come into the bunkhouse carrying a big butcher’s knife he’d brought from the kitchen. He’d made sure they all saw him give the knife to Lester, he’d made sure they heard him tell the boy to keep it by him in his bunk and to go ahead and use it if he had to.

  Boyd himself was no common piece of work: a three-hundredpound Irishman with a face like a great ham. He was probably the same way as the worst of the choppers, but he made a joke of it. Boyd had been a bosun’s mate in the Pacific during the war and he upheld the great tradition of the World War Two United States Navy: If it moves, fuck it; if it doesn’t move, paint it. Though it’s true that in the woods there wasn’t much to paint.

  “You see this, me boy?” said Boyd, handing the butcher’s knife to Lester.“See this? Any of these animals interferes with you so you don’t like it, you cut it right off him, see? Lop it right off. That’ll slow him down.”

  “What if he does like it?” one of the choppers asked Boyd.

  “Then he can give me back me fucking knife,” said Boyd.

  Years ago. Years and years. From the top of his hill Lester watched the fire Nate had built. He watched Nate and Lillian sitting together before the fire, talking. He saw the firelight shine on Lillian’s hair, where it lay down her back. He thought of Lillian’s hair spread out behind her, fanned out, on a grassy bank, on a pillow, Lillian lying back on her hair. You can keep your pussy pines. But, no. Not likely. Not for him. Too many years. Too many years and too few moments. What was he? An old man with a dirty mind. He wouldn’t know what to do with her, would most likely turn and run. Not like some. Not like Blackway. Lester thought of Lillian letting down her hair, fanning it out, spreading it for Blackway. That wouldn’t be happening, either, would it? Blackway might have picked on the wrong girl this time, it looked like.

  The firelight made the night black. He could move anytime now. Still he sat, waited. Presently he unwrapped the parcel he’d been carrying. Inside was his uncle Walt’s old goose gun. It was practically an antique: a ten-gauge, with double barrels as big as water pipes, the kind of gun meant to be mounted in the bow of a skiff. The next gun bigger about got you into the field artillery, as Walt used to say. Walt and his wife had had girls, no boys, and when Walt died his wife had given the gun to Lester. He’d hung on to it, less from having any use for such a thing than from not liking to get rid of it. It stood in a corner at Lester’s. Irene hated it, she wouldn’t dust it, wouldn’t touch it. Then lately, when everybody got so worried about the terrorists and the Islamers and them, Lester had gone out and got a box of shells for Walt’s gun. Irene had mocked him, and Lester didn’t say she was wrong, but the way he reasoned it, he had the gun anyway. It fired. And nobody knew what was going to happen, did they? Did all those people, a couple of thousand people, when they went to work that morning in their office buildings, know that before lunch they were all going to be burned up and their buildings down in the street? They didn’t. What Lester did know, what he knew for sure, was that any Islamer or anybody else who got in front of Walt’s goose gun was going to be out of the fight for good.

  Lester stood, a little painfully. He broke open the gun and took two shells from his pants pocket: fat red buckshot shells with shiny brass bases. They looked like things you might hang on your Christmas tree. Lester loaded both barrels. About time to do it, now, about time to get to work. Lester shut and locked the gun, then started quietly back down the hill in the dark.

  “Jack of Dia
monds to Lucky Jim,” said Whizzer.“Not much else on the table. We bet. Everybody’s in. Jim deals the third card.”

  “Still nothing much,” said D.B.“Until Jim gives himself another Jack.”

  “Wingate’s showing two Clubs,” said Whizzer. “What did you have?”

  “Nothing,” said D.B. “We bet. Lucky Jim deals the fourth. Wingate pulls a third Club.”

  “Jim pulls — what?” said Whizzer. “Did he get his other Jack then?”

  “No,” said D.B. “He got a red trey. Jim’s got a pair of Jacks, only color on the table. He bets ten bucks. I quit. Jim, Whiz, and Wingate have the game. Pot’s right. Jim deals the last card.”

  “Jack of Hearts to Lucky Jim,” said Whizzer. “That’s three Jacks showing.”

  “Another Club for Wingate,” said D.B. “Four flush in Clubs looking at a possible four Jacks.”

  “Or a possible full boat,” Whizzer said, “if Jim had paired a down trey. Either way he beats Wingate’s flush.”

  “He does, if he’s got it,” said D.B.

  “Not bad for a short game,” said Whizzer. “Lucky Jim’s high hand. He shoves in twenty bucks.”

  “For this table, that’s a big bet,” said D.B.

  “Too big for me,” said Whizzer. “I quit.”

  Nate and Lillian sat side by side on the seat before the fire.

  “What’s Lester going to do when Blackway comes?” Lillian asked Nate.

  “Don’t know,” said Nate.

  “I’m not wrong about the gun, am I?” Lillian asked. “That is a gun he’s been carrying around, right?”

  “Don’t know,” Nate said. “I guess it is.”

  “Blackway won’t be scared off by a gun,” said Lillian.

  Lillian watched Nate lean forward and take hold of a little branch of the fir tree he had dragged to the fire ring. He broke it off and poked its end into the fire. The dry fir caught and blazed quickly up, sputtering and snapping.

  “I ain’t scared of Blackway,” Nate said.

  “Yes, you are,” said Lillian. “You say you aren’t, but you are. Everybody is. This thing isn’t going to work. You can’t do it. You and Lester together cannot do this.”