Go With Me Page 5

  “That’s a thing Blackway has going for him,” Whizzer said.

  “Had going,” said Coop.

  “Had,” said Whizzer. “Kind of a sideline he had. Deputy don’t get paid much, you know.”

  “You got to hustle,” said Coop

  “You got to be an entrepreneur,” said D.B.

  “Blackway took the dope,” said Whizzer.

  “Confiscated it,” said Coop.

  “Impounded it,” said D.B.

  “Told Kevin he’d let him go this time,” said Whizzer. “Told him it’d be a good idea for him to get clear out of town, because Blackway was going to be all over him from now on.”

  “Kevin did the smart thing,” said D.B.

  “First time in his life,” said Coop.

  “He took off. Where is Kevin? South, somewhere, ain’t he?” asked Coop.

  “Orlando,” said Whizzer. “His dad’s brother’s down there. Kevin’s working for him.”

  “Doing what?” asked Conrad.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Whizzer said.

  “Keeping out of jail, it looks like,” said D.B.

  “Or not,” said Coop.

  “Or not,” said D.B.

  “What happened with the dope?” Conrad asked.

  “Anybody’s guess,” said Coop.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it found its way to some of Blackway’s friends,” said D.B.

  “Friends from out of state,” said Coop.

  “Associates,” said D.B.

  “Business connections Blackway’s got here and there,” said Coop.

  “He left his girl behind, though, I guess?” Conrad said. “Kevin did.”

  “Well, that was the thing,” said Whizzer.“Kevin takes off, but his girlfriend don’t. She stays. Not only that, she files a complaint.”

  “Against Blackway,” said Coop.

  “Pistol, she is,” said D.B.

  “She goes to the troopers,” said Coop.

  “State police,” said D.B.

  “Tells them Deputy Blackway’s got this thing going on the side where he smokes the evidence,” said Coop.

  “Sells the evidence,” said D.B.

  “Girl tells them she’s a witness to Blackway doing that,” said Coop.

  “State police don’t seem to get too excited by the news,” said D.B.

  “They remain calm,” said Coop.

  “Fact is, they knew all about it,” said Whizzer.

  “No, they didn’t,” said D.B. “They just didn’t want to touch it. Because of Wingate. Wingate’s the sheriff. Blackway’s his deputy. Wingate’s responsible. They didn’t want to make trouble for Wingate.”

  Whizzer laughed gently and shook his head at D.B.

  “You don’t think so?” asked D.B.

  “Keep dreaming, son,” said Whizzer.

  “Point is,” said Coop,“the troopers tell her it’s a sheriff’s department matter. Blackway ain’t a state cop. He’s a sheriff’s deputy. Wingate’s the sheriff.”

  “Wingate’s Blackway’s boss,” said Whizzer.

  “Plus, Wingate’s about the only person in this part of the state who ain’t scared shitless of Blackway,” said Coop.

  “Whizzer ain’t scared of him,” said D.B. “Are you, Whiz?”

  “’Course not,” said Whizzer. “I like Blackway.”

  “The girl turned him in,” said Conrad.“She wasn’t scared of him.”

  “She is now,” said Coop.

  “Nate the Great didn’t seem to be scared of Blackway,” Conrad said.

  “He don’t know no better,” said Coop.

  “Lester?” asked Conrad.

  “Sure, Les is scared of Blackway,” said Whizzer. “But Les is a clever old boy. He’ll be ready.”

  “Les knows what he’s doing,” said Coop.

  “Les knows a trick or two,” said D.B.

  “Point is,” said Coop, “state police go to Wingate, explain to Wingate about Blackway’s sideline, there, with the dope.”

  “Wingate fires Blackway,” said Whizzer. “Turns Blackway into a civilian.”

  “No more car,” said Coop.

  “No more uniform,” said D.B.

  “No more gun,” said Coop.

  “No more evidence to impound for personal use or later sale to your friends from out of state,” said Whizzer.

  “All on account of that girl,” said D.B.

  “She pissed in his well,” said Coop.

  “Blackway’s hot, now,” said Whizzer.

  “Kevin’s long gone,” said Coop.

  “Followed the sun,” said D.B.

  “Girl’s still here,” said Whizzer.

  “Why?” Conrad asked. “Why didn’t she go with Kevin?”

  “Didn’t want to, it looks like,” said Coop.

  “Didn’t get asked, maybe,” said D.B.

  “You heard her,” said Whizzer. “She won’t be run off. Not even by Blackway.”

  “Balls on her,” said Coop.

  “’Course, she don’t know Blackway,” said D.B.

  “She does now,” said Coop.

  “Point is,” said Whizzer, “Blackway ain’t going to just let this one go. He wants to teach her a lesson.”

  “He watches her,” said D.B.

  “Follows her around,” said Coop.

  “Stalks her,” said D.B.

  “Like she said,” said Coop.

  “She ought to have left town when Kevin did, it looks like,” said D.B.

  “She ain’t as smart as she thinks she is,” said Coop.

  “She’s dumb, is what she is,” said D.B.

  “Edie didn’t think she was dumb,” said Whizzer. “When she worked there. Edie thought real well of her. She got the place organized. Customers liked her. Edie thought she was a real bright girl.”

  “How bright could she be,” D.B. asked, “getting together with Kevin?”

  “But you see that over and over, here, don’t you?” said Conrad. “I was saying before.”

  “See what?” Coop asked him.

  “Where?” D.B. asked him.

  “Here,” said Conrad. “Around here. Women, young women, who are more or less bright, cleaned up, straight shooters, capable, strong. Want to work. Anyplace else, they’d end up with good solid young guys, guys just like them. But around here they go for guys who are the opposite, who are going nowhere except jail, who are nothing but trouble. They end up with guys who are trouble on skates. You see that a lot. Why?”

  “Something in the water,” said Coop.

  “Winters are too long,” said D.B.

  “The young guys have this special aftershave they wear,” said Coop.

  “They don’t want to be alone, the girls,” said Whizzer.

  “If that’s what it was,” said Coop, “it worked for What’s-her-name.”

  “It worked too well,” said D.B.

  “Lillian,” said Whizzer.

  “Well,” said D.B.,“whatever it is she wanted, I don’t see why she thought she’d find it here. Thinks she’s so smart. You people. Cat named Annabelle. What kind of name’s that for a cat? What’s she doing around here in the first place?”

  “She likes it here,” said Whizzer.

  “Just like Con,” said Coop.

  “But not so much,” said Whizzer.

  “No,” said Coop.“Nobody likes it around here as much as Con. Ain’t that right?”

  “Nobody,” said Conrad.

  “Well,” said Whizzer. “I don’t know whether she’s dumb or whether she’s smart or whether she likes it here or she don’t, but either way, here she is. And I’ll tell you something else: It looks to me as though Blackway might have picked on the wrong girl this time.”

  7

  THE DIAMOND JOB

  Fitzgerald’s job was on Diamond Mountain. His crew had been up there for three months. They had cleared out half an acre for the landing and built a lane into it for the trucks. Every day another truck, another two or three trucks, cam
e out of the woods loaded as high as a house with fresh-cut logs. You would think there couldn’t be a tree left standing on the mountain — not a tree in the town, in the state. And yet the woods were everywhere, untouched, unchanged, as though the abstracted logs, and the workings that produced them, were a magician’s illusion.

  Lillian, Lester, and Nate found the truck access to the landing, and Nate started to turn off the road.

  “Back it in,” said Lester.

  Nate put the truck in reverse and backed into the log lane until they could see the landing.

  “That’s good,” said Lester. Nate stopped the truck, stopped the engine. The three of them sat, with Lester turned around on the seat so he could see out the rear window.

  “Is he there?” Lillian asked Lester.

  “Don’t see him,” said Lester.

  “Are you going in?” she asked.

  “In a minute,” said Lester.

  He was watching the landing. There was a man there. He had seen them. He pointed to their truck. A second man joined him, then a third.

  “How many of them are there?” Lillian asked.

  “More than that,” said Lester. To Nate he said, “Do you want to go ahead?”

  “Yo,” said Nate. He opened his door and left the truck. He began walking in toward the landing.

  The landing was like a muddy amphitheater with the woods standing close all around. Its scarred, ruined earth was cut with deep ruts and tracks. Fitzgerald ran a neat job, though. There was a big pile of new gravel to one side of the landing for use in filling the ruts and keeping up the lane for the trucks. Around the woods edge, tops, waste logs, butt ends, and other slash had been bulldozed into piles the height of a tall man. Some of the oak butts were as big as bathtubs. There was nothing to do with them but get them out of the way. A hundred years from now they would still be lying right there.

  Lester and Lillian looked out the rear window of the truck as Nate walked toward the landing. Four men now waited for him.

  “None of them is Blackway,” said Lillian.

  “No,” said Lester.

  “What happens now?”

  “Like Fitz said, maybe they know where Blackway is,” said Lester.

  “He just asks them?”

  “It looks that way.”

  Nate had about reached the landing. Just within the woods he came upon a dog lying beside the lane in the shadows. It was a big one, one of those heavy, broad-shouldered breeds with a head the size of a small barrel and a great, dripping maw like a sea cave. It was on a chain fixed to a tree. The dog didn’t get to its feet as Nate approached, but it watched him every second, and it let a low growl rise in its throat as Nate passed before it. Nate stared at the dog, but he didn’t try to avoid it, and he didn’t pause. He left it behind him and walked out into the landing.

  The four loggers had strung themselves in a loose line in the middle of the landing to meet Nate. Two of them had axes on their shoulders, and a third carried one of the heavy poles, shod with an iron point and a hanging iron jaw or hook, that you use to move logs.

  “Do you know them?” Lillian asked Lester.

  “No,” said Lester.

  “Does he? Does Nate?”

  Lester didn’t take his eyes off the group at the landing.

  “No,” he said.

  “What’s going to happen?” Lillian asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  “There’s going to be a fight, isn’t there?”

  Lester glanced at her.

  “Do you want a fight?” he asked her.

  “No,” said Lillian. “Not now. Four of them’s too many.”

  “Kid reckons too many’s about right,” said Lester.

  Nate walked into the landing. There were five loggers now. Blackway wasn’t one of them. They made a half circle before Nate. The loggers were short, heavy men in dirty coveralls full of grease, sweat, and sawdust. They smelled of pine pitch and gasoline. Every one of them was chewing tobacco. Their jaw muscles worked slowly, in unison. None of them spoke. One of them, who stood in the middle of the group, with two others to each side of him, spat tobacco juice into the mud at his feet.

  “Help you?” he asked Nate.

  “Looking for Blackway,” Nate said.

  “Who’s looking for him?”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to see him.”

  “We?”

  “People with me,” Nate said. “We need to talk to Blackway.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you need,” said the logger.

  Nate looked from one of the five to the other, up and down their line. He grinned at them.

  “Yo,” said Nate.

  He moved a little to his left, toward the nearer of the five loggers, who was also the smallest. He could roll them up from that side, if he had to — or he could try. But the five now moved themselves, coming together in a tighter group in front of Nate.

  “That’s right,” said Lester, watching them from the truck. “Close it up, bunch it up. That’s good.” He opened his door and got out of the truck. He took his long parcel from behind the seat, but he didn’t unwrap it. “Start it up,” he said to Lillian. Lillian slid over behind the wheel and started the engine.

  She watched Lester walk down the lane toward the landing. He limped, she saw, hitching his right leg stiffly. How old was he, really? Was he seventy? Was he eighty? Men like Lester, they do hard work outdoors all their lives, and the years, the weather break them down as though they were an old barn or an old truck: By the time they’re middle-aged they’re cripples. Lillian knew those men. Her own father might have used a rig like the one Whizzer had back at the mill. Maybe he had one by now. Lillian didn’t know. She wasn’t in touch with her family. She wasn’t like them. They weren’t like her. She had left them behind her when she had gone with Kevin.

  Lillian watched Lester approach the landing. She saw him look to his right as he passed the dog lying beside the lane, but the dog itself she couldn’t see from where she was. Lester left the woods and limped across the landing toward the spot where Nate faced the five loggers. Lillian watched him.

  She had gone with Kevin because he was like her. He was like her, except that he was funny. She wasn’t funny. She couldn’t afford to be. Kevin was full of mockery. “East Schmuckville,” he called their town. “You can’t miss it,” Kevin said. “It’s exactly four miles south of West Schmuckville.” He made her laugh.

  Blackway put an end to that. Blackway stood in the night beside their car with the cruiser’s lights popping and flashing and listened to Kevin blabbing away, trying to talk his way out of this one. Talk, talk, talk. Kevin thought he was so smart. “Is there a problem, Officer?” In two seconds Kevin was out of the car and slammed down on his face across the hood. Blackway was talking softly to him. Lillian had opened her door to get out of the car.

  “Stay where you are, sweetheart,” Blackway told her. She closed the door again.

  Afterward Kevin shut right up. He wouldn’t talk to her, he wouldn’t talk at all. Lillian asked him what Blackway had said to him the night of the stop. Kevin wouldn’t tell her. He was no longer funny. He no longer made her laugh. He wouldn’t leave the house. Then one day she got home from work and he was gone. No note, no word. Kevin just put his little tail down and ran. Well, fuck him, then. Fuck Kevin. He wanted to run? Let him run.

  The five men in front of Nate heard the truck start. They looked past Nate. They saw Lester coming toward them up the log lane. He had the long parcel tucked under his right arm with one end snug against his side and the other pointing to the ground in front of his feet.

  “Who’s that?” the middle logger asked Nate.

  “He’s looking for Blackway, too,” Nate said.

  Lester came up beside Nate and stood to his right about four feet away from him and no more than seven or eight feet from the loggers.

  “You ask them?” he said to Nate.

  “Yo,” Nate said
.

  “What’s that you got in there?” the middle logger asked Lester.

  “We been to Fitz’s,” Lester said. “Fitz told us we might find him up here. Might find Blackway. That’s what Fitz said, ain’t it?” he asked Nate.

  “Yo,” Nate said.

  “Blackway ain’t here,” said the logger. “What’s that?” he asked Lester again.

  “This, here?” Lester said. “Curtain rods.”

  “Bullshit, curtain rods,” said the logger.

  Lester raised the end of his parcel so it pointed about at the knees of the group of five loggers.

  “Blackway hasn’t been here today, at all, I guess?” he said.

  “He was here,” said the small logger. “Might be he’s gone up to the High Line.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” said the middle logger.

  “Why don’t you?” said the small one. “You see what he’s got. He never told us nothing about not telling nobody where he was. Let him worry about them.”

  “You fellows go on back to work,” said Lester. “We’ve taken up too much of your time. Fitz will dock your pay.”

  The middle logger spat onto the ground between them. “Fitz won’t dock nobody,” he said.

  “Probably not,” said Lester. “We’re much obliged to you. We’ll try the High Line.”

  The five held their ground, but they looked at one another, then at the logger in the middle of their line. Lester lifted the parcel again so its end pointed at the middle logger’s belt buckle.

  “Go on, now,” said Lester.

  The small logger and three of the others turned and started toward the woods. The middle logger turned, too, then turned back to them. He spat into the mud again.

  “He ain’t hiding from you,” he said.

  “Go on,” said Lester.

  “You find him, you’re going to wish you hadn’t,” said the other.

  Lester didn’t reply. The logger turned away. Nate and Lester waited until the five were most of the way across the landing. Then they returned to the truck and Lillian. The great dog lay beside the lane with its head on its paws and watched them go.

  “What happened?” said Lillian. She moved from behind the wheel, and Nate took the driver’s place.

  “Get going,” said Lester. They drove out of the log landing and turned onto the road.