Go With Me Read online

  They got the tree off him, got him out of the woods and down to somebody’s pasture, where a helicopter picked him up and took him to the hospital. It took him to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital in New Hampshire. Several days later, when Whizzer understood where he was, he decided he was a gone man in more ways than one. For all that district, Dartmouth-Hitchcock was confidently known to be a waiting room for the Hereafter — or, not a waiting room only, but an export office, a kind of customhouse, where, as you took your departure, whatever you might have had in the way of an earthly estate was distributed without remainder among various members of the medical community.

  “Dead or bankrupt,” Whizzer said. “Or both.”

  But, no. Not at all. Ten years later he was alive and more or less solvent, collecting a full disability benefit earned the hard way, and enjoying the attention, the regard, the tender care of a small company of loyal friends whom he could no longer outrun.

  Inside, the mill was a long, shadowy hall, poorly lit by filthy windows, where your footfalls on the wooden floorboards were louder than you wished. To either side of a central aisle the old benches, lathes, band saws, jointers, planers, and the rest sat in their dust, and overhead, cables, trolleys, belts, and wheels hung in the gloom. Only at the far end of the floor was there any real light, in the old manager’s office, where Whizzer held forth.

  The office was a room ten feet square with a window looking out over the mill yard and the brook to the wooded hill beyond them and another window looking onto the mill floor. In the office was a cast-iron woodstove, Whizzer’s old leather couch much cracked and scuffed, two steel filing cabinets, packed to overflowing with useless and forgotten paperwork, and half a dozen chairs: rockers, canvas camp chairs, stuffed chairs.

  Whizzer had never married, and the mill office, his domain, was neither bright, nor neat, nor clean. On the walls of the office, piled in its corners and on its shelves, stacked atop its cabinets, was an accumulation of the kind of cobwebbed mementos that generations of unsentimental men had hesitated to take to the dump. There were nailed boots and old harness buckles, there were rusty axes and long crosscut saws, also rusty. There were loose bars, sprockets, carburetors from chain-saw engines. There were brown photographs, framed, showing groups of men with suspenders and heavy mustaches standing in front of piles of enormous logs, the mill behind them.

  High on one wall loomed the head and antlers of a great caribou. Whizzer’s late father had been a big-game hunter. He had brought the caribou trophy back from Alaska, where in 1948 he had been led into the Brooks Range by the great Elwood “Grizzly” Singleton, dean of Alaskan big game guides. The senior Boot had drawn a blank in the game department out there. In two miserable weeks neither he nor Singleton had so much as fired his rifle. The caribou had come from a taxidermist’s shop in Vancouver. As Whizzer’s father told the story, Grizzly Singleton had insisted on buying the head as a present to him before the disappointed hunter boarded the Canadian Pacific for the long haul back to New England. Singleton’s client had been promised a mount, and the Grizzly was an honorable man though, as was well known to every sportsman from San Francisco to Fairbanks, a lousy guide.

  Another trophy in Whizzer’s office was his own: a great horned owl, which glared with its angry glass eyes from a shelf behind the door. It had turned up dead in the mill yard one morning long ago, and Whizzer, then a high school kid, had determined to stuff it. He found instructions in a boys’ magazine. He skinned the bird and had one of the men at the mill shape a kind of wooden football to fit inside it more or less, then he packed sawdust into the empty spaces, sewed the whole thing up, and wired it onto a branch nailed to a board. The glass eyes he mail-ordered from Chicago. They were the most satisfactory part of the exhibit — or the least unsatisfactory. Apart from the eyes, Whizzer’s owl hadn’t held up well. It looked like it ought, in the first place, to have been given a decent burial. It had developed a drunken lean to one side, and over the years mice had moved into its interior and nested there. When they frolicked, the stuffed owl could sometimes be seen faintly to jerk or twitch, as if in life. Some days, indeed, Whizzer’s owl got around the premises more than Whizzer.

  Closing in on a hundred years old, built entirely of wooden timbers, studs, boards, and shingles, all of which were saturated with ancient grease, the mill amounted to a large firework waiting for a match. Whizzer couldn’t afford to insure it. The property existed on the town’s grand list like a crazy aunt in the attic, a painful embarrassment never to be discussed. At any time in the past fifteen years, the town might have seized the place for unpaid taxes, but they didn’t. Why would they? They didn’t want the mill. Nobody wanted it. It wasn’t worth demolishing. It wasn’t worth thinking about. One day, it would burn down.

  Until that day Whizzer kept his little sawmill going off and on in the yard beside the old chair company building, and he kept a kind of club in the office. There was a coffeepot, and there was a cooler. There was the stove for winter and an electric fan for summer. In there, Whizzer sat with whoever turned up: men bringing logs to the mill, the kids he had helping him in the yard, passersby, and a fairly constant set of three or four men a little younger than he, who came and went. They sat in the office and talked — or didn’t. They watched the ball games on a little TV Whizzer had set up. If a quantity of beer should make itself available, they drank it. The time passed. The mill was no Mermaid Tavern, no, but it did what it had to do in its time. And anyway, how many Mermaid Taverns do you need?

  3

  YOU PEOPLE

  Somebody drove into the yard.

  “Who’s this?” asked Whizzer.

  Coop got to his feet and went to the window. He looked out.

  “Lady in a little car,” said Coop.

  “Young?” Whizzer asked.

  Coop bent to the window.

  “I wouldn’t call it young,” he said. “It’s a ’ninety-two, ’ninety-three. A little Escort.”

  “The lady,” said Whizzer.

  Coop looked again.

  “Young enough,” he said.

  “Well, tell her to bring a couple of friends, then,” said Whizzer. “We’ve got a party going in here, tell her.”

  “You tell her,” said Coop.

  “Who is she?” D.B. asked him.

  “Don’t know her name,” said Coop. “Used to work at Edie’s.”

  “What’s Edie’s?” asked Conrad.

  There were four of them in the office. They waited for the newcomer to park her car. They heard her slam the door, then they heard her steps echo on the mill floor. Then she was with them.

  “Morning,” said Whizzer. The young woman stood in the door of the office. She looked from one of the men to the others.

  “Which one is Whizzer?” she said.

  Whizzer raised his hand.

  “You know Scott?” the young woman asked him. “Scott Cavanaugh?”

  “Scotty?” Whizzer said. “Sure. Sure, we do.”

  “I’m looking for him,” the young woman said. “Is he around?”

  “You’re looking for Scotty?” Whizzer asked.

  “I was told I’d find him here,” the young woman said.

  “Who told you that?” Coop asked her.

  The young woman didn’t reply to him. She spoke to Whizzer.

  “The sheriff told me,” she said.

  “Wingate?” Coop said.

  “He said I could get help here, from Scott Cavanaugh.”

  “Well, Scotty ain’t here,” said Coop.

  “He’s upstate,” said D.B. “He went to White River.”

  “Visits his brother up there,” said Coop.

  “It ain’t his brother, it’s his uncle,” said D.B. “The one whose kid’s been in the hospital. That’s Scotty’s uncle.”

  “What’s the matter with the kid?” asked Conrad.

  “Look . . . ,” began the young woman.

  “I thought it was his brother,” said Coop.

  “Well, i
t ain’t,” said D.B.

  “Leukemia,” said Whizzer.

  “Oh, boy,” said Conrad.

  “He’ll be back this afternoon late,” said Whizzer to the young woman. “Scotty. He’ll probably stop by then.”

  “This afternoon?” the young woman said.

  “What do you want with Scotty?” Whizzer asked her.

  “I need his help,” the young woman said.

  “You’re Russell’s boy’s girl, ain’t you?” D.B. asked her. “You’re Kevin’s girl.”

  “I was,” said the young woman.

  “You’re the girl turned Blackway in,” Coop said.

  “That’s why she’s looking for help,” said D.B. “Ain’t it?” he asked the young woman.

  “That’s why,” said the young woman.

  The three men shut up and looked at Whizzer. Whizzer was sitting in his cart. He hitched himself up in the seat. He spoke to the young woman.

  “What kind of help did you want from Scotty?” he asked.

  “What’s Blackway doing to you?” Coop asked.

  “He’s following me. I told the sheriff.”

  “Blackway’s following you?” Whizzer asked her.

  “He’s watching me,” the young woman said. “He trashed my car. He killed my cat.”

  “Blackway killed your cat?” D.B. asked her.

  “He wants to hurt me,” the young woman said. “The sheriff knows. He killed Annabelle because she was mine. To show me. What he would do. What he could do anytime he wanted to. I went to the sheriff. I told the sheriff: He won’t stop there. He knows Blackway. He told me there’s nothing he can do. He told me to find Cavanaugh. He told me to come to you. I came. What am I going to do?”

  “Get another cat?” said D.B.

  “There you go,” said Coop.

  “Leave town?” said D.B.

  “Leave town?” the young woman asked. “You mean run away?”

  “There you go,” said Coop.

  The young woman shook her head. She spoke to Whizzer. “No,” she said. “I won’t do that. I’m here. I’m staying. I told the sheriff. I didn’t do anything wrong. I will not run. Let Blackway run.”

  “Pistol, ain’t you?” D.B. said.

  “Come to that,” said Coop, “she’s right. Why should she run? Blackway’d just go looking for her.”

  “Find her, too,” said D.B.

  “What do you want Scotty to do for you?” Whizzer asked the young woman.

  “The sheriff said he could help me,” she said. “He could do something. Go with me, because of Blackway. He could go with me.”

  Whizzer looked across the little room to D.B. and Coop. He looked back at the young woman.

  “He could, I guess,” Whizzer said. “But he ain’t here.”

  The young woman nodded. She looked around at the three men sitting before her on chairs or on the desk, and at Whizzer in his cart.

  “That’s it, then?” she asked.

  “I guess it is, about,” said Whizzer.

  “You guess it is?” the young woman said. “What’s the matter with you people?”

  “You people?” Whizzer said.

  “All of you,” the young woman said. “The sheriff. You. What’s wrong with you? I come to you for help. I’ve got no place else to go. The sheriff gives me a speech about the law. Your friend isn’t around. And you guess that’s it?”

  “Take it easy, now,” said Whizzer.

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy.”

  “Take it easy,” said Coop.

  “Fuck you,” the young woman said. She turned and started for the door.

  “Take it easy,” said D.B.

  “What about Nate the Great?” Coop asked.

  “Nate?” Whizzer said. The young woman paused in the doorway.

  “Sure,” Coop said. “She needs somebody to go with her. Nate would do it. He’d go with her, you asked him to.”

  “He’s a kid,” said Whizzer.

  “Wait a minute,” said the young woman.

  “He’s a big kid,” said Coop.

  “That’s so,” said Whizzer. To the young woman he said, “Hang on.” To D.B. he said, “Get him in here.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the young woman.

  Nate the Great was around back. He was working with Lester — old Lester Speed. They were unloading cement blocks from Whizzer’s flatbed. They had the truck backed up over the bank, above. Lester was up on the bed with the blocks, and Nate was down the bank, eight or ten feet below, where the blocks were to end up. Lester wanted to push the blocks off the truck and let them fall and land on the ground where Nate could pick them up and move them to a pile behind him. Nate wanted Lester to drop the blocks so he could catch them before they landed. Each block weighed thirty pounds.

  “Come on,” said Nate.

  “Get back,” Lester said. But Nate had been after him since they had started, so he shoved a block off the truck with Nate directly below. Nate caught the block two-handed, like a basketball, set it down, and called for another. That one he caught one-handed. Soon they had a rhythm going between them, but still Lester didn’t like it.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Get back, now.”

  “Come on,” said Nate.

  “We had a young fellow like you in the woods,” Lester said. “Showboat. He liked to catch butts off the loader. Hundred, hundred and fifty pounds, one of them would weigh. Oak butts. He caught them like they were made of — I don’t know — shaving foam. Like they were made of feathers. Do it all day long.”

  “Come on,” said Nate.

  “Until one day, I guess he wasn’t paying attention,” Lester went on. “Thinking about his girlfriend, probably. Came a butt. He didn’t see it. Knocked him down, broke his neck.”

  “I ain’t got a girlfriend,” Nate said. “Come on.”

  “Killed him,” said Lester. “Killed him right there.”

  D.B. came around the truck and stood on the top of the bank.

  “Nate?” he said.

  “Yo,” said Nate.

  “Boss wants you.”

  “Yo,” said Nate. He climbed up the bank. D.B. had turned back to the mill. Nate followed him. A tall, long-boned, heavy-wristed kid: not a scholar, not a talker. Smarter than a horse, not smarter than a tractor.

  Nate followed D.B. into the office and waited in the doorway beside the young woman. Tall as she was, the top of her head was two inches below Nate’s shoulder.

  “You about done out there?” Whizzer asked Nate.

  “About,” said Nate.

  “This lady needs you to go with her to find Blackway,” Whizzer said.

  “Wait a minute,” the young woman said. “Who’s he?”

  “This is Nate the Great,” said Coop.

  “Helps out around the yard,” said D.B.

  “A hired man?” the young woman asked. “Hired boy? You’re giving me a hired boy to go with me? What about Blackway?”

  “Blackway’s been interfering with her,” Whizzer told Nate.

  “Been following her around,” said Coop.

  “Been stalking her, like,” said D.B.

  “Smashed her car,” said Coop.

  “Wait a minute,” said the young woman.

  “Killed her cat,” said Coop.

  “Killed her cat?” said Nate.

  “Look,” said the young woman. “Forget it, all right? I came here for What’s-his-name — Cavanaugh. He’s not here. Fine. That’s my problem, not yours. I don’t want the hired help. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  Whizzer ignored her.“You willing to go with her?” he asked Nate.

  “I don’t mind,” Nate said.

  “You know Blackway?” Whizzer asked him.

  “Seen him.”

  “You think you can handle him?” Coop asked.

  “I guess,” said Nate.

  “What makes you think so?” Whizzer asked.

  “He’s old, ain’t he?”

  Whizzer looked a
round at the other men.

  “He might be forty,” Whizzer said.

  “Nate the Great here will help you out,” D.B. told the young woman.

  “He will not,” said the young woman. “I told you: I don’t want him. This kid belongs at basketball practice.”

  “You belong at basketball practice?” Whizzer asked Nate.

  Nate shrugged.

  Whizzer turned to the young woman.“Ma’am,” he said, “I don’t see you’ve got a lot of choice here. Do you? You went to the sheriff. You didn’t like what he told you. You came here for Scotty. Scotty ain’t to be had. You’re scared of Blackway. So’s everybody else. If you had any sense, you’d leave town. You won’t do that. You don’t think you should have to. Maybe you’re right. ’Course you are. But I don’t quite see your next move, is the thing. Do you? I guess you could go to Blackway on your own, treat him nice, ask him nice to let up on you.”

  “Appeal to his better nature,” said Coop.

  “Get down on your knees,” said D.B.

  “There you go,” said Coop.

  “It might work,” said D.B.

  “Fuck you,” said the young woman.

  “You said that before,” Whizzer said.

  “I know what I said,” said the young woman. “Do you want me to say it again? Okay. Fuck you.” But she didn’t move to leave the room.

  “Well, then,” said Whizzer. To Nate he said, “You might’s well get started, if you’re ready.”

  “You want us to finish with the blocks first?” Nate asked him.

  “No, go ahead,” Whizzer said.

  “Where to?” Nate asked.

  Whizzer looked at D.B. D.B. shook his head.

  “Blackway’s got a camp in the Towns,” Coop said. “Had it for years. I don’t know just where, though.”

  “What Towns?” Conrad asked.

  “The Empty Towns,” said Coop.

  “Lost Towns, we used to call them,” said D.B.