As Good As Gone (9781616206000) (27 page)

THIRTY-­ONE

Will, Gary, and Stuart are fishing for bluegills and crappies in the Elk River. Well, Will is fishing for bluegills and crappies. While his friends throw spinners and spoons out into the faster water, hoping to lure a northern or a big bass, Will has been assigned to this back bay where his bobber and red worms are better suited for calmer waters and where there's no danger that his drifting line can become entangled with Gary's and Stuart's.

The indignity of being relegated to this spot is the second reason for Will's anger. He has smoldered for days over their plans to spy on his sister, and now that Will has his own counterstrategy in place—the fuse waiting in the driveway dust—Stuart and Gary have said no more about Ann and have not repeated their request that Will alter the draperies in his house to allow them to gaze at his sister without impediment. They seem to have forgotten the matter entirely.

Finally, when Stuart lets out a whoop and holds up the northern—close to two feet of fish, its long, slender body flashing silver as it wriggles in the sunlight—Will decides he's had enough. He reels in his line and tears the fragment of worm off the hook. He pinches two chunks of lead split shot on the line only an inch from the hook, and he doesn't bother putting another worm on the hook. He climbs off the log he's been fishing from and walks down the pebble-­studded sand toward the bend in the river where Gary and Stuart stand. Stuart has retrieved his lure from the fish's mouth, put his catch on the stringer, and is already prepared to cast again into the fast-­flowing water.

When Will comes within thirty feet of his friends—close enough, he thinks, to cast with reasonable accuracy—he brings his rod back, sidearm rather than overhead, and sends line, sinkers, and hook flying toward Stuart, the closer of the two boys.

He hits his target but to no effect. The line unfurls near Stuart's waist, but the hook merely scrapes against his jeans. Stuart feels something, and he looks down, but Will is already reeling in his line, preparing for another cast.

“Was that you?” asks Stuart. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to catch something,” Will answers.

“Jesus. You ain't going to catch it over here. Don't you know where the fucking water is?”

Gary seems to understand better what Will's intentions are. “Cut it out, Will,” he says, flipping the bale on his reel closed and lowering his rod.

“I'm not trying to catch a fish,” says Will. “I'm trying to hook a shithead.”

He has his rod drawn back, this time for an overhead cast, when Gary starts running toward Will.

“Will, God damn it! Don't do it!”

Stuart, however, is concentrating on his line, in reeling in his lure with a stuttering rhythm to fool a fish into believing a piece of shiny metal is an easy prey.

Will lets go his weighted line, and as soon as it begins to arc through the air, as balanced and swift as an arrow, he feels sure his aim is true.

The hook catches Stuart in the softer flesh of his arm, above his elbow, but when the barb goes in, he doesn't startle or flinch as if he's been stung. He simply drops his rod and reaches across to the line connecting him to Will. Stuart tears the hook out of his arm, a long strand of blood unspooling in its wake. Then, holding onto the line, hand over hand Stuart begins to haul Will in. “You little fucker—c'mere!”

Seen from a distance—like a hawk's, coasting on the warm wind high above the river—it may seem as though Will is simply walking toward his bleeding friend. And once he's no more than a fishing rod's distance from Stuart, Will wonders why he didn't just drop the rod or at least resist, or to dig his tennis shoes into the sand or even to tug back against Stuart's pressure. And then Will knows. He wants as much fight as he can get, and he starts things off by launching a looping right hook at Stuart's rage-­clenched face.

The punch never lands, though Will doesn't know how Stuart ducked or intercepted it. He doesn't know because Stuart's blow to Will's diaphragm knocks not only air out of him but awareness, and he has no space in his consciousness for anything but the desperate attempt to draw air into his lungs.

Will catches his breath, but he barely has time for a single gasp when Stuart wraps him in a headlock. Will's neck and face are squeezed in the crook of Stuart's right arm—the arm pierced by Will's hook—and he knows that his face is probably being smeared with Stuart's blood. Will has seen Stuart scuffle and fight often enough to know his preferred strategy—immobilize the opponent with a head or neck hold and then pummel away with his free fist. In preparation, Will grabs Stuart's forearm, less for the hopeless task of loosening Stuart's grip and more for getting his hands up to protect his face when the punches come.

But they don't come. This isn't going to be anything like the battle Will fantasized about, one in which he would be obviously outmatched yet his rage and his nobility—yes, yes, what other word would describe his willingness to fight for his sister's honor?—would give him a strength that he had never owned. In actuality, this fight—is it even right to call it that when one combatant is able to exert his will without opposition?—is a return to the powerlessness of infancy when you have neither the size, strength, nor language to affect, in any way, a world that can move or ignore you as it pleases.

Will is not being struck because Stuart has another punishment in mind. Stuart is hauling Will in a direction Will can't even determine. He can't see anything but Stuart's legs, feet, and the ridged sand below.

And then that view changes. The sand turns dark, then wet, and then they're in the water, the river so instantly icy around Will's ankles it feels as though he's stepped into traps that spring shut on him. But the water is soon flowing over his calves, then splashing above his knees, and when it rises to his crotch he can't be sure if it's the cold water that makes him want to gasp again or the even icier realization of what is about to happen.

Stuart is going to drown him.

Does that thought arrive the second before Stuart begins to lower Will's face toward the river, its surface barely wrinkled considering all the dark turbulence below? Or does Will have to glimpse the water coming closer to his mouth and nostrils to know what Stuart intends?

Will pulls and scrapes harder against Stuart's forearm, but not with the hope that he can escape Stuart's grasp. Realism now has as tight a hold on him as Stuart, and in Will's mind Stuart's strength has assumed the same implacable strength as the river. But Will wants at least to free his mouth so he can speak.

Will wants to make a joke.

He isn't sure if he can quite present the situation as hilarious, but he can certainly make a number of ironic, mordant observations, the total effect of which might be humorous. He can say the fisherman, not the fish, has been hooked—the fish has its revenge! He can point out that Stuart hasn't hooked him—Stuart has
crooked
him, caught Will fast in the crook of his arm. And isn't it funny that fish die when they're kept out of the water—they drown in fresh air!—whereas Will is about to die because he can't breathe in water? If he could get his mouth free—lips and tongue would be enough—to make these words, and with his words alter the mood of the boy about to kill him, then Will could control his fate. This is the only real strength and power he's ever had. To think that only days ago he believed he could make his way in the world, survive, like his grandfather, with the prowess of his physical being! If Will Sidey has a life beyond this day, this hour, it will be without any cowboy illusions.

And here is an observation he's sure he would never be able to share with anyone—this water tastes of its opposite element. When Stuart pushes Will's head under, Will tries to hold his breath—
Don't breathe in water!
he tells himself.
Don't breathe in water!
—but the river, with the force of its current, pries his lips apart and flows between his clenched teeth and, wonder of wonders, the water tastes of dirt! The discovery is so marvelous that Will can't be sure if it might not be his sharpest grief—he'll never be able to impress anyone with this special knowledge: The Elk River chews its way through Montana's landscape, and by the time it swallows Will, it has taken in hundreds of miles of dirt, sand, and grit, and if you put your mouth into this churning, yellow water you'll be reminded more of garden loam than anything that flows from the kitchen faucet.

But this taste is soon replaced by the scalding, sour panic of vomit, and when Will has to cough that out—
One more discovery!
He can drown from the liquid inside him as easily as that on the outside!—in its wake the river rushes in, and Will feels his life's borders being washed away in the rush of the current.

The Gladstone Municipal Pool opened three years earlier, and from the day of its opening, Will and his friends were there almost every summer day. Yet for all those hours spent in the pool, Will never dared to open his eyes under water. He couldn't do it in his own bathtub, so he certainly couldn't do it in that water stinging with chlorine. But the next summer, the very first time he jumped into the pool it was with his eyes wide open; over the winter he had forgotten his fear. He'd stay under water for as long as he could, watching the bobbing, kicking, sometimes flailing bodies of the other people, kids mostly, who had no idea they were being watched below the water line. He cherished his invisibility, his ability to be there yet not there. He kept waiting for a dangerous situation to develop—one of the little children sinking to the bottom of the pool perhaps—and only Will with his special vantage would notice, prevent the tragedy, and be hailed as a hero.

The muddy Elk River is as dark as coffee, of course, and Will can see nothing. But then why would he? On this occasion, his life is the one that's dissolving, and the river's murk is indistinguishable from that other darkness that will hold him down forever.

THIRTY-­TWO

Brenda Cady must be inside her house—Beverly can hear that little boy crying, a persistent, desultory wailing.

And there's the push mower, abandoned in the middle of the brown patchy yard. Was Brenda interrupted in her work by Calvin Sidey? Was she lying unconscious inside, knocked out when she refused to give Calvin the information he demanded? Is that why her little boy is crying—because he can't rouse his mother? Is it possible that Brenda, that both Brenda and her boyfriend, are lying inside on the floor . . . ? Beverly bangs on the door so hard her knuckles hurt, but it helps distract her from these dark premonitions.

She jumps off the concrete slab that serves as the step to the front door, and heads toward the backyard, hoping she'll discover Brenda there. Or perhaps Beverly will find a window that will allow her to peer inside.

Beverly has not turned the corner of the house, however, when the front door opens behind her and a voice stops her. “Hey! What the hell are you doin'?”

She pivots and sees Brenda Cady standing at the door and shouting at Beverly through the screen. Brenda is dressed in a bandanna-­print dress and its elasticized top leaves her shoulders and upper chest bare. Near her neck are a series of bright pink blotches, exactly the kinds of marks that a man's fingers would make digging into flesh. Below her right eye is a similar patch of discoloration. That area looks swollen too, as if she might have been slapped or punched. And her lower lip—it looks puffy . . . The scene leaps unbidden to Beverly's mind's eye—
Calvin grabbing Brenda Cady, slapping her across the face, ready and willing to do more if she didn't tell him where her husband could be found.

“I know what you're doing here,” Brenda says when she recognizes Beverly. “But you can turn right around. He ain't here.”

“He was—?”

“He left about ten minutes ago and good riddance.”

Ten minutes . . . If Beverly had not stopped at the Texaco station and bought gas, she would have been here in time. But in time for what? To stop him? She has already failed at that endeavor.

“He's crazy, you know,” Brenda Cady says. “Your husband. Crazy mad and mad crazy. And he's going to get what's coming to him.”

“Did he want to know where your husband is? Is that what he came for?”

“Lonnie? He ain't my husband. My choice, not his.”

Now Beverly wishes she too had corrected Brenda's misunderstanding; it might have established a useful commonality between them, but at the time—on the instant, in fact—she felt that to deny Calvin as her husband would have been disloyal.

Brenda opens the screen door and walks out toward Beverly with a stride that's so languid and self-­assured it's vaguely threatening. If she approached Calvin in that manner, it was no wonder he struck her. But Brenda seems to know that Beverly has no choice but to stand still and accept whatever abuse Brenda wishes to bestow.

Beverly wants to ask how long Brenda held out before Calvin got from her the information he wanted, but instead she asks, “Where did he go?”

“Lonnie? Or your man?”

“Mine.” At the single word Beverly feels her eyes grow warm with tears. She hopes Brenda doesn't notice, for this tough-­talking young woman would surely regard tears as weakness.

“Not that it makes much difference.” Brenda Cady puts her hands on her hips, a defiant stance she hadn't assumed in front of Calvin, of that Beverly is sure. “That old man is going to get himself stepped on and squashed flat.”

“Please,” Beverly says. “Just tell me where I can find him.”

“Why? So you can try to save him? That old man deserves whatever he gets. He should know better than to mess with Lonnie Black Pipe.”

The name is familiar to Beverly. Lonnie Black Pipe has a reputation for being a troublemaker, someone whose temper has landed him in jail on more than one occasion. Beverly wants to say something in Calvin's defense but nothing comes to mind but the kind of remark a child might make boasting about his father.
Your man's a bad Indian? Well, mine's a cowboy.

Instead, Beverly says, in a voice almost too soft for the out of doors, “He's got a gun.”

Her statement elicits exactly the response that might be expected. Brenda Cady's eyes blink as if she has not heard the word
gun
but its sharp report. “Are you sure? I didn't see no gun when he came to the door.”

“Believe me,” Beverly whispers.

Brenda Cady looks back over her shoulder as though she needs to see the site of her conversation with Calvin in order to recall its contents. “The Wagon Wheel. Lonnie likes to play pinochle there.”

“The Wagon Wheel—that's down by the depot?”

Brenda nods. “A gun. Would he use it?” Apparently Brenda is new enough to Gladstone that she has not heard any Calvin Sidey rumors.

“Why don't you call the Wagon Wheel—talk to your Lonnie.
Tell him to leave the bar
.” Beverly is already backing up toward the car.

Brenda shakes her head strenuously. “He won't do it. He won't run from any man.”

“It's not running, it's . . . Say something else then. Tell him you have to take your boy to the doctor, an emergency. Tell him
something
. Just get him the hell out of there!”

Beverly turns and runs toward Adam's car, parked haphazardly at the curb. But before she speeds toward Northern Pacific Avenue and the Wagon Wheel Bar she has to know if the man she'd be racing toward is worth any of her efforts. She turns back toward Brenda Cady, who is still standing on her weed-­choked lawn, squinting and staring up the street as if future events are already in place, located in the sun struck distance and available for sight.

“What did he do to you?” Beverly asks. “Calvin Sidey. To make you talk—what did he do?”

“Calvin . . . ? Is that his name? That old man? What the hell are you talking about?” And then she must realize what Beverly is referring to because her hand grazes the spots on her face where bruises would soon show. “This? He didn't do this. I'd like to see him try. No, this was Lonnie. Sonofabitch.”

Beverly hurries toward the car once again, and though her heart is still weighted with dread, it's lighter than it was only seconds before.

THE SUN'S BRIGHTNESS BURNS
Will's eyes in a way that chlorine never does. Will squints and turns his head, and when he does, someone kicks the bottom of his foot and says, “Hey, stay awake.”

The voice comes from above him, and in his disorientation Will wonders if the same sun that's trying to burn out his eyes is speaking to him.

Then another voice: “Come on. You puked up the whole goddamn river practically, so you gotta be hungry. Get up off your ass, and I'll buy you a hamburger. At Groom's.”

Is that Stuart talking to him? But Stuart was trying to kill him, not feed him. And Stuart knows that Will's parents don't like Will to patronize Groom's. Few parents want their children there. Groom's is on Northern Pacific Avenue, across from the train depot, the only eating establishment on a block that otherwise is nothing but bars, and those are the saloons that cater to the serious drinkers and the down-­and-­out drunks, the bums who ride in on boxcars and cadge a drink before jumping another freight. The Groom's hamburgers that most families in Gladstone eat come into the home in a white paper bag, picked up by fathers so that wives and children don't have to venture beyond Woolworth's when they're on Northern Pacific Avenue.

“But if we're goin' into town,” Gary says to Will, “you better dunk your head in the river again. You got throw-­up in your hair.”

Will manages to sit up, but when he does his stomach lurches, his head feels as if it's being squeezed, and he coughs so hard his sides ache.

“I shoulda' drowned you, you little fucker,” Stuart says. “What the hell was the idea with the hook?”

He squints up at Stuart, who is not looking at Will at all but is nonchalantly pinching blood out of the little tear in his arm.

“I guess you looked like a big fish to me.”

Gary says, “You're lucky I pulled him off you. He really would've liked to drown you.”

“Nah. They would've sent me to reform school. A little shit like him ain't worth it.”

Will tilts his head to the side, and though he can hear a faint gurgling, no liquid drains out. “You could've just said I drowned accidentally. Like the current got me or something.”

“Don't give him any ideas,” says Gary.

Stuart stops squeezing his wound and shakes his arm as if he's trying to restore feeling. “I'll remember that if I ever decide to drown you again.”

“Is that why you said you'd buy me a hamburger? 'Cause you almost killed me?” The taste of silt is still strong on Will's tongue, and when he closes his mouth, sand crunches between his teeth.

“How about you shut the hell up and stop asking your goddamn questions. I ain't so sure the river isn't still where you belong.”

Will isn't sure either. He has gotten to his feet, but he feels unsteady, as though the current is still tugging at him. And now he can tell that water is dammed in both ears. To hear the water rushing inside and outside him is more than disconcerting. The river has almost taken his life—will he never feel right outside its waters? Tonight he'll lie down in his own bed—will he feel the river's motion as soon as he closes his eyes? Will he ever have another dream through which the Elk River's dark waters don't flow?