Affliction (43 page)
Authors: Russell Banks
Way behind him, halfway between the mountaintop and
the town, the house remained dark, empty and closed up, and the barn went on burning. The fire had quickly spread up along the back wall to the timbers and into the lofts, igniting the ancient hay and then the remains of the roof. Great clouds of dark smoke billowed against the sky. There was a loud raucous music to the fire, a crackling erratic drumbeat against the steady howl of the wind from the cold air sucked off the snowy overgrown fields and yard surrounding the structure and hurled into the hot dark center. Flames licked across the timbers overhead, racing and leaping from dry roof boards and shakes that one by one let go and fell in scarlet-and-gold chunks to the dirt floor, where they shattered and splashed like coins. And in the roaring center of the inferno, as if carved from anthracite, lay the body of our father, his face a rictus yanked back in a fixed gaping grin. His terrible triumph.
At the line of spruce trees, Wade hesitated a moment, examining the ground. The snow below the trees was thinner than on the old riverbed, and patches of bare ground showed through; he had followed Jack's footprints this far with ease and now had to search among the rust-colored spruce needles and rocks for the trail. A layer of ash-gray cirrus clouds had moved in quickly from the north, and a sharp breeze had come up, riffling the spruces overhead as he walked slowly, carefully, along the edge of the grove.
And then he saw what he was looking for, a break between the trees, a low broken dead branch and a cigarette butt rubbed out with a boot, and he passed under the trees and came out on the other side, where there was the remains of an overgrown switchbacking lumber road. There was more snow here, and he spotted the footprints at once, leading downhill to the right. It was easy walking, and he moved quickly now, gradually descending for several hundred yards to where the long-unused road bent back on itself and crossed in the opposite direction.
He stopped at the bend and looked down along the slope, over the tops of the trees belowâall the way to Lake Minuit in the far distance, white and flat in the dark surrounding forest like a frozen wafer, where he could make out, at the farther shore, a cluster of pastel-colored boxes that was the trailer park. Mountain View Trailer Parkâwhen he lived there he had been able to peer out his kitchen window and see the very spot where he stood now: a pale opening below a dark
streak made by the spruce trees, and beyond that the lumpy summit of the mountain itself.
The clouds had spread and nearly covered the entire sky, a taut gray blanket stretched from the northern horizon to the dip of Saddleback in the west; there was a long shrinking ribbon of blue sky behind him, but even the rounded top of the mountain was in shade now. Specks of snow flew in Wade's face and struck his hands and melted at once. He shifted the rifle, slipped the stock under his right arm and moved on.
Below, along Route 29 and the side roads off it and outside of town, the last hunters were emerging from the woods, giving up for another year their need to shoot and kill a deer. There may have been a lucky two or three hunters who managed in these waning hours of the season to sight a straggler, a confused or inexplicably careless buck that had managed to survive the hunt almost to the very end and then hungry and restless had stepped too soon from its hiding place in the last light, only to hear the explosion and feel the gut heat and swiftly die. But this late in the season these killings were rare. Most of the hunters now were out-of-state, inexperienced or inept and often merely lazy, so had counted on luck, coincidence, amusing ironies, to get their deer. They hurried to their cars and quickly got the heaters blowing and their stiff hands and feet warmed and drove straight into town to Wickham's or on to Toby's Inn for a whiskey or two before driving home.
Wade walked more slowly now, casting his gaze to his right, downhill, into the dense hardwoodsâoak and maple trees, thick yellow birches and alderâthat had replaced the spruce and hemlock above. He had to squint to see through the billowing snow: it came at him like lace curtains tossed by the wind and clung to his hair and clothing, wrapping him in a thin white caul. Occasionally, he stumbled on a rock in the old road or a fallen tree branch or slipped on the wet new snow, then lurched on, unperturbed, as if it had not happened and the road were smooth and dry.
Several hundred yards beyond the first switchback in the road, he came to the second bend, and the ground beyond the road fell away precipitously and for a great distance: an old mud slide had torn open a long slash of scree, dumping uprooted trees and glacial till into the deep gully below. Wade stopped abruptly and stood at the top and looked out over the rock-strewn gash and piles of brush and tangled tree trunks
that filled the gully, downhill and across the tops of the hardwood trees beyond to the north, where the land dropped away for miles. The wind had momentum up here, where the road was exposed to nothing but sky, and was cold and drove the snow at him almost horizontally.
A mile and a half away and well out of sight behind the long narrow ridge that leaned against the mountain like a low buttress, the barn continued to burn, and a dark cloud of ashy smoke rose from the woods and blew away to the southâ while, unheard and unseen from the mountainside, sirens howled and a pair of fire trucks and a dozen volunteer firemen in their own trucks and cars raced out along Parker Mountain Road from town. Where he stood, looking north, Wade could seeâthrough the dip between Saddleback and the mountainâall the way into the valley to town, and although he could not see the town itself, he could easily make out the spire of the Congregational church and the roof of the town hall and the break in the trees, a dark meandering line, where the river ran through.
He examined his rifle, wiped the snow off it and sighted down the barrel into the gully, lifted it and aimed it toward the town for a few seconds. Then he smiledâan almost beatific smile, golden and warm and filled with understanding, as if a beam of celestial wisdom had entered his brain. He lowered the rifle, slipped the stock under his arm and walked down along the road a few yards to a grove of low pines, where he stepped out of the wind, leaned the gun against a tree, buttoned his jacket and pulled the collar up and put his hands into his pockets, as if for the first time he had felt the cold.
On his left, a precipice dropped off to piles of brush and tangled knots of roots and old dead trees cast there by the mud slide; in front of him the overgrown road descended smoothly to a birch grove in the distance; there it switched back a third time, running toward Wade again, but way below him, below the cliff and the gully and brush, and nonetheless visible to him: so that a man walking uphill, laboring in the cold wind and snow and the vague late afternoon light, especially a man wearing scarlet or bright-orange hunting clothes, would be visible for a long time before he was able to see the other man, who stood waiting for him among the pine trees.
Wade drew his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, looked at the pack for a second and, as if reconsidering, slipped it back.
He checked the safety on his rifle, brushed a few flecks of snow from the barrel and hefted it in his hands in a measured appraising way, then turned slightly and leaned his left shoulder and hip against the trunk of a pine tree. When Jack came into sight belowâa red flash of cloth moving through the breaks between thigh-thick white birchesâWade lifted the rifle and sighted down the barrel at the bend in the road ahead of him, where Jack would have to turn and face him.
Jack had shot his deer, a huge buck, and he was dragging it out of the woods. He had tied the large gutted body of the animal onto a travois made from a pair of saplings lashed together and extending in a V over and beyond his shoulders. He hauled the deer slowly uphill, leaning forward in the blowing snow and sweating from the effort. His rifleâEvan Twombley's Winchesterâwas slung across his chest, and as he trudged up the snow-covered lumber trail the gun slapped rhythmically against him, and he stared steadily down at the slippery rough ground in front of him, as if lost in thought. Behind him, the travois bumped along, causing the deer's carcass to lurch back and forth; its head, overweighted by the large rack of horns, lolled back against the ground, bloody mouth agape, black tongue extruded, wide-open eyes opaque as onyx, and a thin broken trail of blood dribbled over the trampled snow behind.
When he rounded the bend in the trail, Jack looked up to see how far he still had to go, and he saw the man with the rifle and saw that he was aiming the rifle at the center of his chest; the man was no more than ten yards away and slightly uphill; Jack recognized him at once.
ALL THAT I HAVE DESCRIBED is supported by physical evidence: Wade's footprints in the snow leading from the road down into the woods, ending thirty feet from where Jack's body was found, then returning straightway to the road again; Pop's truck parked there by the road and Jack's truck gone but turning up three days later in a shopping mall parking lot in Toronto; and, of course, the utter disappearance of Wade himself. His very absence is evidence.
Was he headed for Alaska, where his friend the plumber Bob Grant had gone, run out of money for gas and food in Toronto, abandoned the truck and merged with the migrant population of the city? We do not know; we speculate in solitude; we do not speak of his disappearance to one another.
Maybe we want to believe that Wade died, died that same November, froze to death in his thin sport coat under newspapers on a bench in Harbour Front Parkâunknown, unclaimed. But he could just as well have hitched a ride on a train or a truck headed west: Toronto is where the Canadian West begins, where it is very easy to become a nameless wanderer. Maybe tonight, years later, he huddles under a Trans-Canada
Highway overpass in a suburb of Winnipeg.
Of course, he could have turned himself into another person altogether, a potter living under an assumed name in a commune in Vancouver. Or, more likely, somewhere along the line he drifted south at a rural border crossing into Minnesota or North Dakota and found a job pumping gas at an all-night truck stop, one of those men with long hair going gray, face masked by a full beard, gaze deflected whenever someone looks hard at them.
But all that is speculation now. We do know that he shot Jack Hewittâas surely as we know that Jack Hewitt did not shoot Evan Twombley. And we also know that Wade killed his own fatherâ
our
father.
My
father. That snowy afternoon, after the fire in the barn was put out, a child-sized pile of char was discovered in the blackened rubble, and a forensic specialist from Hanover easily identified it as the remains of a Caucasian male, aged 65â70, five feet nine, 135-145 pounds. Who else but my father?
It had been assumed at first that the old man's death was accidental: he was a drunk and probably set the fire himself, smoking, maybe, while fooling with a kerosene lantern. But then came scientific evidence that my father's death was caused not by fire but by a skull-crushing blow to the head, which must have been inflicted by the last person seen with the old manâseen, less than an hour before the fire started, by Margie Fogg, Wade's fiancée (for she was still that), and by his daughter, who was also the victim's granddaughter. And again, there was the incriminating fact that the last person seen with the old man had fled. The evidence, all of it, was incontrovertible. What was not scientific was logical; and what was not logical was scientific.
Just as the evidence that Jack Hewitt did not shoot Evan Twombley, not even by accident, is now seen by everyone as incontrovertible. Even by me. There was no motive, and Jack left no secret bank account, no stash of hundred-dollar bills: the links between Jack and Twombley, LaRiviere and Mel Gordon, existed only in Wade's wild imaginingsâand briefly, I admit, in mine as well.
LaRiviere and Mel Gordon were indeed in business, buying up as much high-country real estate as they could, but there was nothing illegal about it, although it probably was not proper for Mel Gordon to finance the operation with union
funds when he was a director and major shareholder in the company receiving the funds. It was a legitimate investment, however, one that has paid off handsomelyâfor the union membership, for Mel Gordon and Gordon LaRiviere, and for almost everyone else in town too. The Northcountry Development Corporation has brought enormous changes to the region: Parker Mountain Ski Resort is advertised all over the northeast, full-page ads in the Sunday travel section of the
New York Times
, the
Boston Globe
, the
Washington Post
, and so on. Fifteen lifts, seventeen miles of trails from beginners' to advanced, with several fancy lodges, over a hundred chaletlike condominiums installed along the old Parker Mountain Road in a development called Saddleback Ridge, a half-dozen après-ski lounges, restaurants and bars, including Toby's Inn, now called the Skimeister's Hearthside Lodge. The White-house place out on Parker Mountain Road is still in Wade's name, along with mine and Lena's, and I keep paying the taxes on it, which keeps it out of LaRiviere's hands. The house remains empty and looks the way the barn did before the fire. Now and then I drive out and sit in my car and look at the wreck of a house and wonder why not let it go, why not let LaRiviere buy it and tear down the house and build the condominiums he wants there?
For it sometimes seems that there is no one in Lawford, except for me, whose life, seen from a certain angle, has not been changed more by the Northcountry Development Corporation than by Wade's awful crimes. Hettie Rodgers, called a hostess, is a salesperson for time-share units in a huge pool-and-pavilion complex under construction on the south slope. Jimmy Dame, tossed out of work for a while when LaRiviere closed down the well-drilling operation to devote all his energies to Northcountry Development, tends bar nights at the main lodge on Lake Minuit, where the trailer park used to be, and he seems content. Nick Wickham has sold his restaurant to Burger Kingâthey wanted the in-town lotâand Nick is talking about opening a video game arcade at Northcountry's minimall at the new Route 29 cloverleaf. Frankie LaCoy started dealing cocaine and got nabbed in a sting operation in Nashua. Chub Merritt has opened a snowmobile and recreational vehicle dealership. Alma Pittman has announced that, because she does not want to move her office into the new brick municipal building going up on the site of the old town
hall, she will not run for town clerk again; the truth is that she has no chance of beating the woman running against her, a bright young CPA, until recently a Dartmouth development officer, married to a geology professor and pregnant with her first child. The community, as such, no longer exists; Lawford is a thriving economic zone between Littleton and Catamount.
The lives of those who were closest to Wade have been altered in different ways, and I believe that, unlike the others, they are still stunned, perhaps permanently so, by the events of those few weeks and thus, having told their stories to me, wish now to remain essentially silent on the subject. I have not seen or talked to my sister Lena in recent months, not since she and her husband and children left Massachusetts for a religious community in West Virginia; when I did talk with her, she was unwilling to speak of our brother or of the death of our father. She would not speak even of the death of our mother. It was as if all three lives were inextricably wound together and, like a disease to which she was immune, excluded her. I let her alone and gathered my information for this account from other sources. Lillian and Jill and Bob Horner moved to Seattle, where Bob has a new position with Allstate Insurance, Lillian is studying for her real estate license and Jill, who has been legally adopted by her stepfather, is about to enter high school. Margie Fogg moved to Littleton, to be nearer her mother and tend to her dying father. She works at the women's health center there, and when I last saw her, she seemed more interested in talking about her plans to adopt a baby from Central America than about Wade, so our meeting was brief.
Which leaves me. I carefully unfold and read again the tattered news clipping from the
Boston Globe,
and begin anew, knowing that you have read the same kind of story numerous times in your own newspaper: a man in a small town evidently went berserk and murdered a few people thought to be close to him, murdered them apparently without motive or warning.
TWO SLAIN IN NH
Local Man Sought for Questioning
Lawford, N.H., Nov. 15. In a related series of events over the weekend, two men were killed in this peaceful upstate town of
750. The body of Glenn Whitehouse, 67, a retired millworker, was pulled from the ashes of his barn, which burned to the ground Saturday in a fire of suspicious origin. Whitehouse had been killed by a blow to the head, authorities said.
The body of the second man, John Hewitt, 22, the town police officer, was found by State Police Captain Asa Brown in the woods of nearby Parker Mountain, where Hewitt was deer hunting. According to police, he was shot once by a high-powered rifle. Hewitt was the hunting companion of Massachusetts union leader Evan Twombley, whose accidental death here was widely reported two weeks ago.
Police are searching for Wade Whitehouse, 41, the son of the first victim. Hewitt had recently replaced the younger Whitehouse as town police officer. Brown said, “We have plenty of evidence. The man didn't even try to hide his tracks.”
Townspeople are shocked by the twin killing, the first murder in Clinton County in more than a decade. The suspect is believed to have left the state in a burgundy Ford pickup owned by Hewitt. A nationwide manhunt, with Canadian authorities cooperating, is under way.
Â
You read the account and move quickly on to news about the Middle East or a flash flood and train wreck north of Mexico City or a huge drug bust in Miami, and unless you are from the town of Lawford or in some other way knew one of the victims or the man suspected of killing them, you forget all about it. You forget it, because you do not understand it: you cannot understand how a man, a
normal
man, a man like you and me, could do such a terrible thing. He must not be like you and me. It is easier by far to understand diplomatic maneuvers in Jordan, natural calamities in the third world and the economics of addictive drugs than an isolated explosion of homicidal rage in a small American town.
And unless the police in some other small American town happen to arrest a vagrant who turns out to be Wade White-houseâor maybe he won't be a vagrant; maybe he will have turned himself into one of those faceless fellows we see working behind the counter at our local video rental store, or the gray-faced man who shoves circles of frozen dough into an oven at the Mr. Pizza at the mall and lives in a town-house apartment at the edge of town until his mailman recognizes
him from the picture at the post officeâunless that happens, and Wade Whitehouse finally receives justice, there will be no more mention in the newspapers of him and his friend Jack Hewitt and our father. No more mention of them anywhere. The story will be over. Except that I continue.