Go With Me Page 7

  Lillian and the two men turned into the parking lot at the High Line. Nate stopped the truck in front, and they sat and watched the building for a minute.

  “This is the place?” Lillian asked.

  “This is it,” said Lester.

  “What a dump,” Lillian said. “People pay to stay here?”

  “Not for very long,” Lester said. “Hah. What I mean, not for very long — at a stretch. Ain’t that right?” he asked Nate.

  “Yo,” said Nate.

  The High Line wasn’t a big place. It sat on an acre or less, a gravel lot on the road front and a patch of weeds and brush behind, festive with paper wrappings, empty cartons, empty cans and bottles, used-up rubber products, other trash. The building held twenty units in a two-decker range with stairs on each end to get you up to a balcony that led to the second-story rooms. The place was painted white with a green roof, green doors to the rooms. Maybe that paint job was intended to charm. Maybe it was intended to summon the prim, clean order of the Vermont village. It didn’t. For the High Line and places like it, you can paint them any color you want, and what they mostly look like is a state prison for the half bad.

  “Well,” Lester said.

  Nate opened the driver’s door and got out of the truck.

  “You probably want to wait out here,” Lester said to Lillian.

  “I’m not sitting out here alone,” said Lillian.

  “Suit yourself,” said Lester. He left the truck and turned toward the building.

  “Aren’t you going to take your gun?” Lillian asked him.

  “Gun?” Lester asked.

  “That’s right,” said Lillian. “Your package? Aren’t you going to bring it?”

  Lester paused. He seemed to consider. Then he shook his head.

  “I guess not this time,” he said.

  The three of them had started toward the building when a door marked OFFICE in the near end of the first floor opened, and a tall man stood in front of it looking at them. He was a big one, all right: six and a half feet high and in no way skinny, with a long tangled beard that hung from his chin to his chest. The beard was black at the sides and gray down the middle and made the man look like he was in the act of eating a skunk headfirst.

  The bearded man approached them.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

  Nate took a step toward him and turned a little, so his left shoulder was toward the man. But then Lester said, “Hello, Stu.”

  The man looked past Nate to Lester. “Oh, yeah,” he said.

  “How have you been, Stu?” Lester asked.

  “What do you want?” asked the man.

  “Blackway,” said Lester. “We’re looking for Blackway.”

  “What for?”

  “He’ll want to see us,” Lester said. He looked at Nate. “Ain’t that right?” he asked Nate.

  “That’s right,” said Nate.

  “That’s right,” said Lester.“Blackway’s a lucky man today. We’ve got some good news for Blackway. He’ll want to see us.”

  “He ain’t here,” said Stu. “He was, but he left.”

  “That’s too bad,” Lester said. “Ain’t that too bad?” he said to Nate.

  “That’s too bad,” Nate said.

  “Blackway will be hot about missing us,” Lester said.“Won’t he?”

  “He will,” said Nate.

  “He won’t be happy,” said Lester.

  “He won’t,” said Nate.

  “His partner’s here,” said Stu. “You can see him.”

  Just then a woman in a room on the second floor began to laugh. She began, and she didn’t stop: a high, clear, unhinged laugh as though she was being tickled. She laughed until she ran out of breath, then she started in again.

  “Hee-hee-heee-heee. Oh, hee-heee-heee.”

  “What did you say?” Lester asked.

  “You can see his partner,” said Stu. He turned and led them up a flight of concrete steps to the second-floor balcony and along it to a room halfway down. He knocked on the door. It opened immediately. A man stood in the doorway, filling it. In the adjoining room the woman’s laughter went on and on. The man in the door stepped back out of the way. Nate, Lester, and Lillian followed Stu into the room.

  In the room there were four men. One sat in a chair at a credenza against the wall to the left. The others stood: one beside the bed, one in the corner beyond the bed, and the fourth, who had let them in, near the door. On the bed were two large suitcases.

  All the lights in the room were on. There was a big window in the wall opposite the door, but its heavy drapes were closed tight.

  The man standing beside the bed was snapping shut the lid of one of the suitcases when the three of them entered behind Stu.

  The man sitting at the credenza looked up at them. He blinked. “Uh, who are they?” he asked.

  From the next room the crazy woman’s noise was louder than it had been out on the balcony. It wasn’t laughter now, but a broken wail, a howl as of the world’s lonesomest coyote on the world’s lonesomest prairie. “Say what?” asked Stu.

  “Who are they?”

  “Looking for Blackway,” said Stu.

  “ Yoo-ooo-woo-wooo-wooo.”

  “What?” said the man at the credenza. “Which one is that?” he asked Stu.

  “That’d be Delphine,” said Stu.

  “Can’t you shut her up?” he asked.

  “You know Delphine.”

  “ Yoo-ooo-woo-wooo-wooo.”

  “I’ll get her,” said the man by the door. He left the room. Shortly the howling next door shot up into a little shriek and then fell quickly away to silence, as when you lift a whistling teakettle quickly off the fire.

  The man sitting at the credenza took a cigarette from a package at his elbow and put it in his mouth. Stu stepped forward and lit it for him with a metal lighter. The man puffed his cigarette, and Stu closed the lighter with a loud snap and stepped back to his place. “They’re looking for Blackway,” he told the seated man.

  The man at the credenza was middle-sized. He wore a brown leather jacket. He had a round, bewildered face, and he stared at them as though he weren’t fully awake and responded to what was said to him only after a certain delay, as though he had to wait for a translation. He smoked his cigarette.

  “They’re looking for Blackway,” Stu said again.

  “Blackway isn’t here,” said the seated man.

  “You know where we can find him?” Lester asked.

  The man who had gone next door to quiet the crazy woman came back into the room and took his place by the door.

  The sleepy man at the credenza gazed at Lester, but he didn’t reply.

  “You know where Blackway is?” Lester asked him again.

  The man shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know them, at all?” he asked Stu.

  “I know him,” said Stu, looking at Lester. “Sure.”

  “Her?” the man at the credenza asked.

  “No,” said Stu. “Could get to know her, though.”

  The man in the corner grinned. Nate turned to look at Stu, but Lester put a hand on his shoulder.

  “The thing is,” said Lester, “we need to see Blackway.”

  The man at the credenza turned to him. “Blackway isn’t here,” he said again.

  “You said.”

  The other let the ash on his cigarette drop onto the carpet.

  “Uh, what do you want with Blackway?” he asked.

  “Well, the thing is, he won,” Lester said. “Didn’t he?” he asked Nate.

  “He did,” said Nate.

  The man blinked. After a moment he said, “Won?”

  “He won the raffle,” said Lester.

  “Uh, raffle?”

  “That’s right,” said Lester.“The fire department raffle. You know.”

  “I do?”

  “Blackway won it,” said Nate.

  “He won part of it,” said Lester. “Didn�
�t he?” he asked Nate.

  “That’s right,” Nate said. “He won the VCR.”

  “He didn’t either win the VCR,” said Lester.“He won the gas grill.”

  “That was Denny won the grill,” said Nate. “Blackway won the VCR.”

  “You’re thinking of last year,” Lester said. “Denny won the grill last year.”

  The man at the credenza gazed from one to the other of them. “VCR?” he said.

  “That was the year before,” Nate said. “Denny won the cord of wood last year.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” said the man beside the bed. He hadn’t spoken before, but now he said, “Jesus fucking Christ! You fucking woodchucks got all the time in the world up here, don’t you? Are we going to do some business, here, today? This week? Is this some kind of a fucking party, here?”

  “No,” said the man at the credenza. “Okay, okay,” he said to Lester. “Blackway was here. He was going by the Fort. You know the Fort? He had to see a guy at the Fort. He might be there. Or he might have gone ahead up to his place, up the mountain. His camp. You want him, I’d go to the Fort, then if he isn’t there, I’d go to his place. You know where that is?”

  “We know,” Lester said.

  The man at the credenza blinked. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t know where that is,” he said. “Uh, you know where that is?” he asked the man standing at the door.

  “All the time in the fucking world,” the man by the bed said. “Hey, why don’t we get a few more in here? You know? We could have a party. Why don’t we send out for fucking pizza?” He slapped his hand down on one of the suitcases that lay on the bed. “Can we move this?” he demanded. “I’ve got a long drive.”

  The seated man looked at the big bearded man, Stu. “Get them out of here,” he said.

  “Blackway stops back here, tell him about the gas grill, okay?” said Lester.

  “About the VCR,” said Nate.

  “Okay, okay,” said the other.

  The man at the door turned and opened it, and the three of them left the room, followed by Stu. They stood on the balcony outside.

  “That was Blackway’s partner, you said?” Lester asked Stu.

  “That was nobody,” Stu said.

  “I mean the one who was talking,” Lester said.

  “Nobody was talking,” said Stu. “Go on, now. Go on home. If I was you, I’d go right on home. Forget about Blackway. Give the — what? — the TV to somebody else. Blackway don’t need a TV.”

  “Gas grill,” said Lester. “We can’t. Blackway won it. It’s his. We’ve got to get it to him.”

  “You want Blackway, go to the Fort,” said Stu. “If he ain’t there, Murdock will be. He’s buddies with Blackway. He’ll know where he is. See Murdock.”

  “Murdock?” Lester asked. “Is he back?”

  “Since spring,” said Stu.

  In the next room the crazy woman began to laugh again, opening with a low chuckle but soon rising to the full, howling hysteria of her earlier performance. Did she, maybe, think she was singing?

  “There she goes again,” said Stu. He slammed his fist against the woman’s door, but her laughter continued.

  “Get out of here,” said Stu.

  They left him on the balcony and went down the stairs and across the lot to the truck. Stu watched them from the balcony until they had driven out of the lot. Lillian turned in the seat to look behind.

  “He’s watching us,” she said. “What a toad.”

  “You mean Stu?” Lester asked.

  “All of them. You know him?”

  “I did,” Lester said. “Some time ago. We worked on the same woods crew one year. Part of the year — until he quit. Young Stu was never what you’d call a hard worker.”

  “What a bunch of toads,” Lillian said. “I feel like I need a bath just being in the same room with them. And that woman next door? My God, what was going on in there?”

  “Couldn’t say,” said Lester.

  “Do you know this Murdock he was talking about?” Lillian asked Lester.

  “Seen him,” said Lester. “He’s a prize steer, Murdock is. He was in prison, somewhere in the south. Too bad for us.”

  “That he was in prison?” asked Lillian.

  “That they let him out.”

  “I ain’t scared of him,” said Nate.

  “’Course you ain’t,” said Lester.

  “I wasn’t worried back in there, either,” said Nate. “I wasn’t worried about the big one, Stu. If he’d started something, I had him.”

  “He was twice as big as you,” said Lillian.

  “He was soft,” Nate said.

  “That other one, though,” Lester said. “The one did the talking. He was different.”

  “He was zoned,” said Lillian.“He was on Valium or something.”

  “What’s Valium?” Lester asked.

  “I bet they were all zoned,” Lillian went on, “or we wouldn’t have gotten out of there. You wouldn’t have been able to blow all that raffle garbage by them. That was the stupidest thing I ever heard. It was like something Kevin would try.”

  “Who’s Kevin?” Lester asked.

  “It was just like Kevin,” Lillian went on. “Nothing but talk. Nothing but words.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?” Lester said.

  “It worked because the big one is too dumb to move, and the rest of them were wasted,” Lillian said. “We were in trouble in there. You tricked them — again. You did it again. If you’d had to fight them, it would have been different.”

  “Stu ain’t so dumb,” said Lester. “I wouldn’t say Stu was dumb. Not smart, maybe, but not that dumb.”

  “What about the other two?” Lillian asked Nate. “I suppose you weren’t worried about them, either?”

  Nate didn’t reply.

  “Look,” said Lillian. “That’s two times you’ve been able to sneak around without a fight. Do you think you can do that much longer?”

  “Hope not,” Nate said.

  Lester laughed. “Me, too,” he said. “You just wait till I turn this kid loose. You’ll see something then.”

  “You’ll turn him loose?” asked Lillian. “And how about you? You wouldn’t have been much help, would you? You didn’t bring your gun with you.”

  “Gun?” asked Lester.

  “You didn’t bring it,” said Lillian.

  “No,” said Lester.

  “Why not?” Lillian asked.

  “Gun’s only good when it’s the only gun,” Lester said.

  10

  A MUSEUM OF WHAT?

  D.B. shook his head. “Les ain’t crazy,” he said.

  “He just spent a little too much time working too far out in the woods, it looks like,” said Coop.

  “Got hit by one too many falling trees,” said D.B.

  “Like me,” said Whizzer.

  “You said it,” said Coop, “not me.”

  “But I ain’t crazy,” said Whizzer.

  “You said it,” said D.B., “not me.”

  “No,” said Whizzer, “but yes: Les put in his time out there. He worked for Fitz’s dad — hell, he might have worked for his granddad. Les worked in the woods when they had horses.”

  “He doesn’t look that old,” said Conrad. “How old is he?”

  “Older than me,” said Whizzer.

  “Nobody’s older than you,” said Coop.

  “I remember Les as a kid,” Whizzer said. “When we were kids. He used to hang around Lucas’s shop, help with the shoeing.”

  “Lucas’s shop?” asked Conrad.

  “Lucas’s,” said Coop. “Blacksmith shop. Used to be just this side of the bridge, on the right, there.”

  “Place that’s an antiques shop now,” said Whizzer. “The Forge.”

  “Oh, that place,” said Conrad. “You know, that’s another thing.”

  “What is?” asked D.B.

  “Les helped around the shop,” Whizzer went on. “Some people said he lived the
re, at Lucas’s, upstairs or in the coal shed, there.”

  “What’s another thing?” D.B. asked Conrad.

  “Wait,” said Conrad.

  “Les didn’t really have anyplace to go, he didn’t have a home, it didn’t look like,” said Whizzer.“He just kind of turned up one day, only a kid. Slept at Lucas’s, slept wherever he could. Slept here, probably.”

  “Kind of a Huck Finn,” said Conrad.

  “Kind of,” said Whizzer.

  “Who?” asked D.B.

  “Who?” asked Coop.

  “He had no family?” Conrad asked Whizzer.

  “If he did,” Whizzer said, “nobody knew who they were. He hung around, did one thing and another.”

  “He was a kid,” said Conrad. “Didn’t he go to school?”

  “It don’t seem like he did,” said Whizzer. “Who was going to send him? But he knew something about horses, and by and by he went to work in the woods.”

  “What’s another thing?” D.B. asked Conrad.

  “Well,” said Conrad, “how everything around here used to be something else. Like the antiques shop was a blacksmith’s. Our house? Our house was a schoolhouse, Betsy says.”

  “That’s right,” said Whizzer. “That’s right, it was.”

  “So what?” asked D.B.

  “Well,” said Conrad. “It strikes me, that’s all. Everything’s switched around. The blacksmith’s an antiques shop, the school’s somebody’s house . . .”

  “That place on the way to the Fort,” said Coop. “That basket store. That was — what?”

  “Dr. Osgood’s office, when I was a kid,” said Whizzer.

  “The Fort itself, come to that,” said Coop. “The Fort used to be a garage, go back far enough.”