"All right." His face betrayed no emotion at all. "I appreciate you coming in like this. I'm gonna tell Hop to stay the hell away from you. He don't, you let me know."
I guessed that he knew who the kids in the pickup were, and would administer justice in his own way and in his own time. "All right."
"I had a visit from a private investigatah this mawning. Russian guy, from down to New Jersey. Checked in with me, just like he's supposed to."
Man, this guy was a laugh a fucking minute. "Is that right?"
"Ayuh. Said he was tracing some guy jumped bail on an ahmed-robbery chahge in Bayonne. Guy name of Mohammed something. That wouldn't be you, would it?"
"I never even been to Bayonne."
"Figured that," he said. "I nevah liked private investigatahs myself. Most of 'em ah just bottom feedahs, you ask me. Anyhow, I'm gonna leave that paypah, and all them stories in it, right theyah in the trash bucket."
I think my heart had stopped beating. "What is it that you want from me, Mr. Bookman?"
He shook his head. "Nothing at all," he said. "I want you to have a good time while yaw with us. Gevier ought to have yaw cah fixed tomorrow or the day aftah. See if you can stay out of trouble in the meantime."
"I'll do that."
"Good," he said. "Thanks for coming in."
I stood up to go.
"Manny?"
"Yeah?"
He turned the picture of him and Franklin back around to face him. "You notice how nice and quiet it is up heah? We like it like that."
I thought about protesting my innocence, but I didn't. I just walked out.
* * *
I wanted to run away.
I hesitate to admit it now, but I did, I wanted to run, I wanted to take off. Looking out Bookman's window, I could see Canada right across the water, for Chrissake, I knew I'd have to drive about thirty miles up the U.S. side of the St. Croix and cross at Calais, Jesus, I can't tell you how bad I wanted to do it. Bookman was letting me slide, maybe because he decided Nicky was better off with me than in some foster home, maybe because I had picked up Franklin and given him a ride home, or maybe it was just because he didn't feel like filling out the paperwork. I didn't want to push my luck with the guy, though, I wanted to be gone, I wanted to go grab Nicky and run.
I drove Hobart's Subaru over the causeway that links Eastport to the mainland, past the Passamaquoddy Reservation, the fucking Subaru barely broke ninety but I was in full flight mode, I promise you. Then I had this thought: All I need is one small thing to go wrong on this relic, this rusted collection of steel, paint, iron oxide, and rubber, and they'll be scraping me up off this fucking road with a shovel. Where would Nicky be then? It's like when you hear someone say, "I would have killed myself but I was too much of a coward." I got to the end of that road, the end point, where it butts up against U.S. 1, and I wrestled with that. I sat there at the stop sign, there was no reason not to, there was no one behind me and no one coming. Easy enough to get away, if that was what I wanted. I could call Gevier and tell him to chop the van and sell the parts, leave some money with Louis, tell him to pay Hobart for the Subaru, grab my kid and take off. I wouldn't be fooling anybody. I might buy myself enough time to cross the border and get lost, but Bookman would find out in a day or two that I'd run away, and Louis and Eleanor would know it, too.
I found that I cared what these people thought of me. And worse than that, I didn't want my kid living with some guy whose coping skills consisted of running away every time the shit got a little funky. Still, part of me thought I was losing my edge, going soft. How did this make any sense? Nicky's too young, he won't remember anything
.
I couldn't do it.
I turned left, headed back to Louis's house.
* * *
There was a big yellow Mercedes parked up next to the Averys' yellow house. I stopped as soon as I noticed it, maybe a quarter of a mile away, and pulled the Subaru over to the side of the road. I fished my bird-watching glasses out from behind the seat, thinking, From now on, everywhere I go, they go. I got out and glassed the place. All I could tell was that the car had Maine plates and there was nobody in it. S 500, maybe four years old. I have never understood Mercedeses' popularity, they're too heavy and too slow for my taste. They do what they're made to do, though. You might as well wear a sign. "Hey, I'm a rich old guy." It struck me then, I was rich, but I wasn't old yet. The Mercedes still looked like an old Checker Marathon to me.
I waited for about half an hour but nobody came out of the Averys' house to get into the car. I couldn't see through the windows, either, not at that distance, and there wasn't much cover between me and the house. I got back into the Subaru and fired it up, drove on past.
After you go past the Averys' horse pasture the road curves, and between that and the trees in his woodlot I was very shortly out of sight. Before you get to the Gevier estate there's a little path on the right leading up into the woods, another narrow, overgrown wagon track where the trees come right down next to the road. I slowed down there. I couldn't see either the Geviers' or Averys' house from that spot, and they couldn't see me. I turned the Subaru into that wagon track and drove up in between the trees.
It was smoother going than I had expected. The Subaru was made for this sort of thing, I guess, with its low-torque engine and four-wheel drive. I was almost starting to like it in spite of myself. I mean, it wasn't like I'd ever wanted one. If I got a sport-ute, I wouldn't go for an old crock like the Subaru, I would pick something that had AC, a CD player, two sunroofs, three-hundred horsepower, and a ten-grand custom paint job. Of course, then I'd be afraid to take it up into the woods, where it would get all scratched.
The track ran uphill into the trees about a hundred feet and kind of petered out. You couldn't see anything from in there, not the main road and neither one of the houses. I parked the Subaru in what seemed the logical place and got out. I headed through the woods, in the general direction of Louis's house. I was distracted, defending myself from the onslaught of mosquitoes, so it took a few minutes, but I came out in Louis's pasture, closer to the road than I had intended. It was just dusk, dark enough so that I thought I could sneak up next to the house without much chance of being noticed, especially if I approached from the front of the place, where nobody much went. I checked for the horse first, and then I went for it.
I saw him just before I got to the corner of the house. He was an eastern screech owl, no doubt about it, I had looked up the listing in
Sibley
the night before. Smallish for an owl, mottled brownish gray, ear tufts. The tufts look like ears but they are not, they're just little bunches of feathers on top of the owl's head. The owl can lay them back like a cat or point them up if he wants to, but his ears are actually openings on the sides of his skull under the feathers, one higher than the other so he can triangulate on the sounds his dinner is making before he catches it. I don't know why he had the ear tufts, I can't think of a possible survival advantage they gave him, or why some owls have them and others don't. Maybe a lady screech owl would never look at you if you didn't have them, who knows. He heard me coming, of course, and he flew away, but I got him before he did. I can't really describe the feeling that gave me, it was almost a physical chill. I don't understand why I was so interested, either, but I can tell you that right then, that owl was fucking beautiful. For a fraction of a second, just an eyeblink, I was tempted to forget everything else, follow the bird and watch him hunt, but instead I just watched him fly away.
It was Sam Calder Sr. sitting in the Averys' kitchen. He was on one side of the kitchen table and Louis was on the other, Eleanor standing behind her husband with her hands on his shoulders. There was one more woman in there, too, I couldn't see her but I could hear her voice. I assumed it was Sam's wife. I couldn't tell what any of them were saying, I could hear only murmurs. Louis was agitated, though. I could tell from the tone of his voice and the way he sat in his chair that he was not happy. Eleanor stood calmly, patting Louis once in a while. She loved him, you could feel it coming right through the wall of the house, she loved the fucking guy. Jesus. What would I have been if I'd had a woman to love me like that? Shit.
I followed the edge of Louis's pasture down to the road, then followed the road around to where the wagon track up into the woods started. Long way around, I know, but I'd had it with the Leatherstocking routine, at least until I got some bug spray. I got back to where I'd left the Subaru, fired the thing up, and drove back down out of the woods. I turned my cell phone on, but I couldn't get a signal, so I drove to the convenience store where I'd seen Hopkins romancing his girlfriend and called Louis from the pay phone. I told him I wanted to go hear Roscoe's band at the VFW, and he said that he and Eleanor would be glad to look after Nicky. I could hear Sam Calder Sr. in the background, and Louis didn't seem in any hurry to get back to him.
"Is that Sam senior I hear?"
"Ayuh," Louis said.
"He still harassing you about that field up in Eastport?"
"Ayuh."
"Why don't you throw him the hell out?"
"Can't," Louis said, with a trace of sadness in his voice. "Events have conspired against me."
I remembered that Louis had seemed kind of dour the night before, and I wondered what had happened.
* * *
There was a different woman working behind the cash register in the convenience store. She probably thought I was nuts. I bought gas, and a whole bunch of other shit, too, maps, a flashlight and batteries, bug dope, some chocolate bars, Poland Spring water, a big hunting knife to go under the seat, and so on. You'd have thought I was going to the North Pole. I had picked up a bunch of new mosquito bites, though, and in a classic case of locking the barn door after the horse was dead, I doused myself with repellent. The bugs had reminded me, Maine is not New York City. You got to be prepared up here, or something will start chewing on your ass.
* * *
I've never been into music. People look at me and assume I'm into rap, but I'm not. To me, rap ain't nothing but some guy talking shit, and you can get that for free anytime. It's interesting, though, you look at kids who go for that, they usually live someplace where it's okay to go around blowing smoke out of your ass. Where I come from, you never make threats, it's not safe. You're gonna do something, you either do it or you keep your mouth shut and you step out around. A lot of the places I've sublet, though, people are really into their sound. Old dudes from the sixties hang on to those old LPs, I been inside places where they had boxes and boxes of them. I imagine them blowing reefer and putting that old crap on the turntable, remembering back when they were gonna change the world. My thing is, I'll go out somewhere to hear guys play, but I'm not gonna start buying their stuff and lugging it around with me. That's in the city, though, where you can go hear music any night of the week. Not so easy out here in the boonies.
I guess that's why I decided to go hear Roscoe's band. There was a pretty good crowd when I got there, the parking lot was almost full, about half cars and half pickup trucks. I had to park the Subaru way out back, down in a dark corner. I could hear the music as soon as I got out. It was, I guess, country and western, but with a twist, with a French Canadian accent, you might say. I would call it an improvement over the original, because the guy's girl might have broken his heart and left him for you, okay, but instead of whining about it, he was gonna come over to your house and kick your ass.
There was an old soldier at the door, white hair and sad eyes. He took my five bucks and nodded me inside. The place was one big room and one small one, the small one being the bar. Roscoe's band was set up at the far end of the big room, and they were dressed like shit-kickers, white shirts, black ties, jeans, cowboy boots and hats. They were loud and energeticRoscoe's shirt was soaked with sweat. He played the fiddle. He didn't have it up under his chin, though, he had it jammed into his belt and he was wailing on it, man. You might not like his style but you couldn't fault his enthusiasm. A half dozen couples were jumping around on the dance floor in the middle of the room. Roscoe looked at me over their heads, nodded at me, and flashed that Teddy Roosevelt grin of his, but then he was lost again, submerged in what he was doing. There were round tables scattered around the edges of the room, about ten chairs each.
I noticed Franklin first. You couldn't miss him. He was sitting at a table on the far side of the room, next to his father. I saw him glance at me and I waved to him. He looked down at the table but he waggled three thick fingers at me. Bookman caught the motion, saw me, and waved me over, motioning to an empty chair next to his son. I made my way around the perimeter of the room, nodding at the few faces I'd seen before. More than ever, it seemed to me, I stood out in the sea of plaid flannel shirts and white faces, different in every aspect. They tolerated me well, though, smiling and nodding in spite of my brownish skin color, black leather jacket, and running shoes. Ex-cop I used to know liked to call them felony boots.
