Bloodline (9 page)

Which I wasn't. It was just that I was getting the feeling that these guys would no more want to talk about teenage moms than about Lee's blunders at Bull Run.

One was bigger than me. One my size. One smaller. They had long hair tucked under baseball caps, which topped a uniform of dungaree jackets and jeans. The jeans were tucked into work boots, which were unlaced. How would they put it in the fashion pages of the
Times
? A loose, casual look for those weekends in the country.

The girls broke the already-long silence.

“Hey,” Dulcy said.

“This is Jack,” Belinda began. “He went to Portland to talk to Missy Hewett about her kid. Except she doesn't have it now. She gave it away so she could go to college.”

I detected disapproval of Miss Hewett's maternal instincts.

Dulcy again.

“Jack's a writer. He does articles for magazines.”

The boys did their best not to gush.

They stared some more. I stared back.

“How ya doin'?” I said, finally.

The biggest guy nodded first, then the one who was my size. The little guy, who was standing with his feet planted wide apart as if he were ready for my charge, just stared some more.

Perhaps we'll pass on the Civil War, I thought, and move right on to Napoleon and his neuroses.

I looked at them and they looked at me. Their hats advertised Ford trucks, a brand of shock absorbers, and Winchester firearms, respectively. I had a hunch they didn't want to talk about American history. But they probably wanted to talk about that far more than they wanted to talk about babies.

“Kenny,” Dulcy said to the smallest guy. “I forgot your cigarettes.”

She smiled teasingly from under her mane of hair.

“Sorry.”

Hey, Dulcy, I said to myself. Way to soften him up.

“So you know Missy Hewett?” I said.

“Know who she is,” the big guy said, and almost smiled.

“She's a bitch,” Kenny said. “She a friend of yours?”

“No,” I said. “I met her once. That's all. Through kids at the high school.”

“Well, she's a bitch,” he said again.

Ever the diplomat.

Probably he hoped I would try to defend her honor and we could have it out right there. I didn't take the bait.

“Why do you say that?” I said.

“Because I want to,” Kenny said.

“No, I mean why do you think that?”

“'Cause that's what she is. Put that in your article.”

He pronounced
article
as if it were a woman's undergarment, something small and dainty.

“Yeah, a lot of kids thought she was stuck-up,” Belinda said.

“How come?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she said, uneasy for a moment, and then plunging on. “I mean, like she was too smart for everybody else or something? Didn't party or nothin'. But my stepmother knew her mother, and she used to be wild.”

“Who was that?” the big guy said, suddenly interested.

“Joyce Hewett. Too old for you, little boy.”

He shrugged, then turned to me.

“That old truck got a three-fifty or a three-twenty-seven?” the big guy said.

“Three-twenty-seven,” I said.

“Them's good motors,” he said. “Guys put 'em in stock cars.”

“Runs great,” I said.

We were en rapport.

There was a moment of silence and we stood between the trucks like people on a blind date. The pit was deadly quiet. The girls looked on as if the whole thing were some sort of reunion gone awry. The medium-size guy and Kenny seemed tense and poised. I noticed Kenny had a large clasp knife in a leather case on his belt.

“So what do you want?” Kenny asked abruptly.

“Nothing, really,” I said. “I'm gonna be talking to kids around here for this story, and I thought I should meet some people.”

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“Right here in Prosperity,” I said. “The dump road. You know the artist's house?”

If he knew it, he didn't acknowledge it.

“How long you lived there?” Kenny continued.

“Six months or so,” I said. “I came here from Androscoggin. I worked for the newspaper over there.”

Kenny looked at me, turned his head slightly and spat, then turned back.

“I think you smell like a cop,” he said.

“Kenny!” one of the girls gasped. Nobody else moved. The big guy smiled. I didn't turn to see the girls.

“Hey,” I said. “Think what you want, but you're wrong.”

“That's what you say,” Kenny said.

“Yup.”

“But I say you're a narc,” he said.

“You can think I'm a Martian,” I said. “I don't give a shit.”

The words hung there. Somewhere in the brush, a chickadee gave that long
dee-dee-dee
call. A second chickadee answered it. Then a blue jay, farther away, and the titter of a warbler. A yellow warbler, it sounded like to me. Too bad I hadn't brought my binoculars. Perhaps one of the boys would have a Peterson Guide in his truck.

I shifted on my feet and grinned.

“What you smilin' about?” Kenny said.

“What're you all pissed off about?” I answered.

“None of your friggin' business,” he said.

“But you don't even know me,” I said.

“I know you're here and I didn't invite you,” Kenny said.

His mouth moved but his eyes were fastened to mine, unblinking, like a knife fighter's.

“They invited me,” I said, nodding toward the three girls.

“That's not what we're talking about,” Kenny said.

“What are we talking about?” I asked him.

“Some guy from away who walked in here like he owned the place. Why don't you go back to New Jersey, cop? Where you belong.”

“I never liked New Jersey,” I said. “Except maybe for the Jersey Shore. And the Pine Barrens. Ever heard of the Pine Barrens? They're a lot like Maine except they have ticks. And deer. Lots of—”

“I don't like cops,” Kenny interrupted.

“Oh, but they speak very highly of you,” I said. “Exemplary social skills. For a sociopath.”

“I oughta kick your ass,” he said.

“I rest my case,” I said.

“Let's do it right now,” Kenny said. “Come on.”

He took a step forward so he was about eight feet away. I had four inches on him, maybe fifteen pounds. But I didn't lift truck motors for fun.

“You sure, Ken?” I said, smiling. “I've got to remind you that an assault charge isn't gonna increase your chances of getting into law school.”

“Come on, pussy,” he said, beckoning me forward.

I shook my head and grinned, then looked away, first to the two guys and then to the girls. I figured Kenny would either sucker-punch me or be left hanging, like a dancer without a partner.

The punch didn't come.

“Well, boys and girls,” I said. “It's been real. If you're ever on the dump road, stop in.”

All three girls decided to light cigarettes, despite the surgeon general's warnings. The big guy leaned back on the truck fender and, pushing his hat back, gave me a good-old-boy grin. The other guy looked to Kenny to see what to do. I'd guess that in the pecking order of the pit, Kenny was number two. I wasn't sure what this little exchange had done for his standing.

“Ken,” I said, walking over to my truck and stopping by the door. “I don't know what to tell you. I'm not a cop. I'm just a newspaper reporter. Come over sometime and I'll show you my clippings. In New York City, I wrote about people who would chew you up and spit you out. Either that or they'd just kill you and never give it another thought.”

“Colombians, right?” the big guy said. “My cousin was in prison in Connecticut with 'em. Said they were mean mothers. He's rugged, too. You know Lyle, right?”

The medium-size guy started to answer.

“I'm not through with you, narc,” Kenny said to me suddenly.

“Whatever,” I said.

I climbed into the truck, shut the door, and started the motor. There was a puff of blue smoke.

“Motor job,” the big guy said.

The third guy stood poker-faced.

“Take it easy, boys and girls,” I said. “And, oh yeah. If I were Missy Hewett, I would have been a bitch, too.”

I backed the truck up, put it in gear, and lurched back through the pit and out the path onto the road, leaving them to their dreary Hole in the Wall hideout. The route back was due west, right into the sun, and I pushed the visor down. Squinting into the glare, I made a mental note to call
New England Look
in the morning.

The price for this one had just gone up.

11

O
f course, by morning I'd reconsidered. The bats had been relatively quiet, allowing me a good night's sleep, and the passage of time—and three or four beers before bed—had made my little chat in the gravel pit seem innocuous, or at least not so threatening. I snuggled under the covers, listened to the birds outside the window, and thought to myself that Kenny probably wasn't such a bad guy, once you got to know him. Hey, and that big guy, he was quite thoughtful, really. Mr. Medium-Size would just have to get over that painful shyness. And the girls, they were nice kids. Make somebody a nice ex-wife someday.

With this feeling of grand benevolence—and denial—I went about my Sunday.

The morning was a trip to Waterville for the
Times
, then a long, leisurely brunch on the back deck. With my feet up on one of Millie's sculptures—a large piece of melted metal with one end that looked like a face and the whole thing skewered on a pipe, like something that would have graced Frankenstein's waiting room—I ate fried potatoes from Clair Varney's garden and English muffins with Mary Varney's
raspberry jam. In Prosperity, Maine, I became entirely engrossed in the travel section story on what to do in Milan.

All in all, it was a pleasant morning. And afternoon. And right into cocktail hour. I read every word in the
Times
, even the classified ads for apartments. At about that point, I remembered a rather jaded colleague, a guy named William, who worked the national copy desk and, in his blackest hours, maintained that the newspaper's function was not to inform but to distract.

“Millions of words,” he would say, “and it matters not which ones, or that they appear in any particular order, but only that they are available every morning to give the readers something to take with them to the john. And, of course, to create the illusion that each day brings us something other than one step closer to death.”

The power of positive thinking.

But I put William out of my mind by reading the mansions-for-sale section at the back of the
Times
magazine. For the price of one of these palaces in the Hamptons you could buy most of Prosperity, and maybe the adjoining town of Liberty, too. Of course, anyone who would want a palace in the Hamptons wouldn't know what to do with Prosperity, wouldn't know what to say or how to dress or where to go to dinner. They would look out on the supple tree-covered hills and see desolation. They would drive past the trailers, dug into the woods like battle emplacements, the homebuilt houses, and the old farmhouses and see something more foreign than the South Bronx. Where they would be repulsed, I was fascinated. Where they would be uneasy, I was at home. Where they would see a bleak landscape of dark woods, I saw the richness of nature.

And Clair Varney wouldn't hand them a bottle of Bud and talk about Vietnam.

Yup, I was feeling pretty good about myself. And then the phone rang.

“It's Kenny,” I said, walking to the kitchen. “He's calling to apologize. He doesn't know what came over him, but he thinks he's got to cut back on caffeine.”

I grabbed the phone.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi, Jack,” a woman's voice said.

“Hey, Roxanne,” I said. “How are you?”

She was good, she said. She was still in Colorado Springs and hadn't started skiing yet.

“Another six weeks,” Roxanne said. “But I've been mountain-biking a lot. I'm getting into that; it's really big out here. How are things there?”

“Good,” I said. “I've been out on the deck. Read the whole
Times
. Gonna take it easy. I decided I've been pushing myself too hard.”

“Whatcha been doing?”

“Oh, this and that. Hanging out with the Varneys. Drove down to Portland the other day and had a Sam Smith's at Three Dollar Dewey's.”

“The place is still going, huh?” Roxanne said, as if she'd been away for ten years instead of six months. In some ways, ten years seemed more like it.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Same old place. Same old Portland.”

“What took you down there?”

“Oh, a story. Maybe a story. A guy I knew at the
Times
called. He's working at
New England Look
now. Wants a freelance piece.”