Disappearances (29 page)

“Do you want any help lugging them out to your van?” Uncle Henry said.

“No,” Croggins said. “It's just like carrying a sack of feed. We'll meet you in the office.” He slung one of the LaChances over his shoulder and headed down the hall toward the front door. Hathaway followed close behind him with the older brother.

“Dad,” I said, “we can't send Warden off with them. They're crazy. There's no telling what they'll do to him.”

“There's no telling what they would have done to Tett and Hank and Harlan,” my father said. “Hen, fetch R.W. out of the toilet and set him up in Tett's chair.”

Warden Kinneson proved to be less tractable than the LaChance brothers. As soon as he saw Croggins and Hathaway he began to scream that they were committing the wrong man. “I'm the new superintendent,” he shouted.

“I'm Calvin Coolidge,” Hathaway said. “You think we better give this cuckoo a whiff of the sleepy-sleep, Superintendent?”

“I don't believe it would hurt,” my father said. “He's apt to rave all the way down the line if you don't. Next thing you know he'll be telling you he used to be a game warden.”

“I was,” Warden screamed. “I was a game warden for seven years before being appointed superintendent. That man on the stretcher is an impostor. He's nothing but a filthy Canuck poacher.”

“Was it after you was King of the Jews that you got to be a warden, or before?” Hathaway inquired, dousing his cloth generously. “The only appointment you've got is on the locked ward, Tettinger. Here now. Stop thrashing. Take it like a man.”

Warden went under reluctantly. “He's a big fleshy one,” Croggins said. “Best we lug him out together, Hathaway.”

My father and Rat and Henry and I accompanied them out to the van and watched them strap Warden in between the LaChance brothers. Hathaway and Croggins kept saying that they had never bagged three at once before. I was beginning to realize that my father, while incapable of a mean or petty thought, could be extremely ruthless on occasion. I despised Warden; my father seemed actually to like him, but had no scruples about sending him to a lunatic asylum that employed lunatics. In part his attitude could be explained by that frontier hardness he preserved to the end, or perhaps it was his sense of humor that led him to such excesses. I don't know, and maybe I don't really want to.

It was very cold now, but before we could get my father back inside another opportunity for him to display his ingenuity presented itself. Just as Croggins and Hathaway were getting into the van a man came running up the lane from the barn. “Help,” he shouted while still some distance away. “I've been robbed. My train's been stolen and wrecked.”

“Who on earth is that?” Croggins said.

“That's Ebenezer Trucott,” my father said. “He was a brakeman on the old St. Johnsbury and Lamoille for years before the big wreck back in twenty-one. After that he come here. Every once in a while he gets the idea his train has been wrecked again.”

Compton rushed up to us. “Get the police,” he panted. “They drove it right into the lake. Hurry, men.”

Suddenly he recognized my father. “You,” he said. “It's you.”

“Of course it's me, Ebenezer. Has your train been derailed again? We'll get it back on the tracks first thing in the morning. Run inside now, your soup's getting cold.”

Compton sprang for my father with his hands outstretched. There wasn't anything Uncle Henry and I could do without dropping the stretcher, but Croggins and Hathaway were both accustomed to acting quickly. Croggins grabbed the infuriated engineer, whom Hathaway proceeded to anesthetize with great expedition.

“What should we do with this one. Superintendent?” Croggins said. “We don't have any more room inside the van. Not unless we stack them up like cordwood.”

“We don't have papers for him either,” Hathaway said. “We can't take him without papers.”

“This is an emergency,” my father said. “You saw him try to throttle me. We'll tie him to the roof. Wouldn't you like to bring in four all to once? That would be a record that would stand for a good while.”

“Tie him to the roof?”

“Certainly. Like a deer. Heist him right up there, Croggins, before he wakes up.”

“I don't think he'll be waking up for some time,” Hathaway said. “I used up the rest of the bottle on him. We'd be heroes, Croggins. Let's do it. Four to one haul ain't nothing to sneeze at.”

“Papers be damned,” Croggins said, lifting Compton onto the van roof. “Have you got some rope, Superintendent?”

“I think we can spare a few lengths,” my father said. He turned to Rat. “Orderly, fetch up a piece of that rope from the pack basket, if you will. Bring back a small token of our esteem from the milk can for these fine gentlemen.”

After Compton had been secured on the van roof, spread-eagled like a dead bear, my father presented Croggins and Hathaway with two bottles of Seagram's.

“Very nice to meet you,” Croggins said, shaking his hand.

“Yes,” my father said. “I hope we can get together again under more pleasant circumstances.”

“I can't imagine any more pleasant circumstances,” Hathaway said, shaking hands.

“You don't know what a service you've done me,” my father said.

Hathaway held up the empty blue bottle and tapped it.

“That Hathaway,” Croggins said.

As they drove off I said, “Won't Compton get cold up there when he wakes up?”

“I expect he will,” Uncle Henry said.

Back in the dining room everyone seemed to be thriving under the restoration of Dr. Tettinger. Fred Stillwater was accompanying Mason Cobb on the concertina and many people were still dancing. Someone had gotten Prof Corbitt's doctoral robe and hood. Attired in all his academic resplendence, he sat in the washtub and presided over the distribution of the whiskey. Little Gretchen got up on the table and began taking off her clothes. Undressed she looked incredibly wanton and emaciated.

“Come, Dido, my inamorata,” cried Prof Corbitt, divesting himself of his robe as Little Gretchen tumbled off the table into the tub.

Toward dawn Dr. Tettinger passed out in front of the fireplace. Prof Corbitt and Little Gretchen were asleep in one another's arms in the washtub, exhausted from a night of Olympian calisthenics. Everyone else except Walter and Abiah Kittredge had gone to bed. Now they said good night and slipped off hand in hand.

“I reckon we can go home now, boys,” my father said.

“Bill,” Uncle Henry said, “somehow I have the notion that it just ain't going to be quite that simple.”

“The first reason I'm against this,” Uncle Henry said, “is that you're the one that ought to ride in the Buick. We can put the whiskey in the boot and stretch you out on the back seat and Billy and Rat and me can set up front. That leg ain't nothing to fool with. You heard what Tett said before he passed out. You freeze it up and you'll surely lose it. Besides that, they're bound to be patrolling them tracks with Compton's train twelve hours overdue. They'll pick you up before you get to Memphremagog, much less the Common. Your ideas get wilder and wilder, Quebec Bill. We'll all go together in a nice warm car.”

We were standing beside the handcar in the first light of the morning. It was still at least an hour before sunrise, and bitterly cold. I agreed with Uncle Henry. If we all went in the Buick and kept to the back roads, I doubted that we would be picked up. Also I dreaded the idea of pumping that handcar all the way down to the Common in the cold. The temperature couldn't have been much above twenty degrees, and the air smelled like snow. I kept thinking about poor Compton, lying roped to the top of that van. He would freeze to death for certain, I thought. He was probably stiff already.

“I'll think about it,” my father said. He was sitting up on the seat of the handcar and twirling the chambers of the revolver Uncle Henry had gotten away from one of the LaChance brothers just before Croggins slapped the straitjacket on him. Beside him sat the one remaining milk can and the pack basket containing the rest of our rope, the hatchet and twelve bottles of Seagram's Rat had apparently transferred before taking the other milk can up for the party.

“You go fetch Rat down, Hen. I and Bill will think on what you said.”

“You'll run off on me is what you'll do. I know you better than that.”

“No, I promise we won't do that. Just look at that Roadmaster, Henry. See it begin to take shape in the light. That's a fine automobile you've got there.”

“It ain't White Lightning.”

“You could paint her white and pretend she was.”

“I'll go get Rat,” Uncle Henry said.

After Uncle Henry left I said to my father, “We'd better go in the Buick, Dad. It's too cold to fool around out here. Uncle Henry's right.”

I know what my father's answer to that would have been, but before he could reply we were illuminated in a bright swath of headlights.

“What's Henry doing with that Buick?” my father said.

The car started up with a roar and came straight down the lane for us. Berserk laughter erupted into the dawn.

“Christ,” my father shouted. “That ain't Henry. Pump, Bill.”

I leaped onto the back of the handcar and began pumping. The Buick missed us by inches and rammed into Walter Kittredge's prize manure pile.

“There goes Henry's bumper,” my father said. “Pump for your life, Bill.”

The big car backed fast out of the manure pile, spun around and started after us down the tracks.

“This is too bad,” my father said. “I'll have to bust Henry's windscreen.”

Encircling the last milk can and the pack basket with his left arm, he held the LaChance brother's pistol out in his right hand at arm's length and took careful aim. He fired and the windshield shattered. I kept pumping. The Buick kept coming.

“Damn that man,” my father said with admiration. “He's indestructible.”

He fired again. Still the Buick came on. Over the engine and the pounding of the tires on the ties we could hear that baying laughter. I had a terrible vision of Carcajou driving with the pike pole still in his chest.

“There goes a tire,” my father said. “There's another. That'll slow him down, Wild Bill.”

The handcar was going very fast now on the long downhill grade toward the trestle over the St. John. All kinds of impossible expediencies occurred to me. Maybe we could jump off and run into the cedar swamp; but my father couldn't run, he couldn't even walk. Periodically Carcajou emitted a long uncanny imitation of a train whistle. The tire rims thundered over the ties. My father fired three more shots, but mad Rasputin was gaining on us. My arms were tiring fast. We were all through, I thought. He had us.

“Pump, Wild Bill,” my father shouted.

He was trying to stand up. As we sped out onto the trestle with the Buick only a few feet behind us, blinding me with its lights, my father did stand. He fired his last bullet directly into the driver's seat at point-blank range. More laughter. I pumped furiously. Once again my only objective was to get off a trestle, as though it wouldn't be so bad to be crushed to death on dry land.

“Pump, Bill.”

“Pump,” shouted Carcajou as the Buick bore down on us. He began to laugh again, and was still laughing when my father, standing on his swollen wounded leg, lifted the last milk can high above his head and hurled it through the broken windshield and into the front seat.

“There goes Henry's Roadmaster,” my father shouted as the Buick plunged into the river.

We stopped to reconnoiter just the other side of the trestle, where many years before my father had shot the two hijackers. Over in the east above the cedar swamp the sky was pink again. Three days ago we had looked at the same sky with hope in our hearts. Since then we had lost the canoe and Henry's Cadillac. We had lost eight thousand dollars' worth of whiskey and been instrumental in the wreck of a freight train and a new Roadmaster Buick. We had killed five men, including Carcajou, seen another man decapitated and sent four men to a lunatic asylum. Back home our cows were starving and my mother was doubtless sick with concern for us. My father had a fractured jaw and a leg that he might never walk on and that was now beginning to bleed again, the blood soaking through the bandages onto the platform of the handcar. Besides the clothes on our backs, we had nothing left but the pack basket, some rope, a hatchet and twelve bottles of whiskey. Already I was beginning to get cold again.

My father pointed to the east. “Wild Bill,” he said, his voice quavering with wonder, “here hath been dawning another blue day. Ain't that sky just about the grandest sight you ever hope to see?”

The grandest sight I ever hoped to see was our farmhouse, but I didn't say this to my father. What I said was, “Your leg is bleeding. We've got to stop that bleeding.”

“That's just the wound cleaning itself out. Wounds will do that, you know. Hark. What's that buzzing?”

I ran back to the trestle to see what Carcajou was doing now. The dark surface of the river was still; there was no sign of the Buick. The buzzing seemed to be coming from out over the lake. A small gray float plane appeared out of the mist. It was coming in above the bay and heading up the river. All that occurred to me was that here was a way to get my father to a doctor before he bled to death. I ran out on the trestle, took off my hunting jacket and waved it over my head.

The plane banked and landed in the bay. It turned and taxied up into the mouth of the river. Two men were inside. Both were wearing uniforms. I thought they might be wardens.

The pilot brought the plane up under the iron bridge to the trestle. His partner got out on a pontoon and fastened a rope to one of the trestle pilings. On the side of the plane and the wings were the letters U.S.B.P. I realized that we were being rescued by the border patrol.