Crow's Landing (30 page)

“John Wayne is the Rooster. I speak now of the original
True Grit.
In the end is Lucky Ned Pepper and three others, and Rooster is alone. On the prairie. With Winchester rifle in one hand and Colt .45 in other.” Yuri took the revolver from his lap and raised it in the air, the barrel pointing straight at the windshield. “Fill your hand, you sonofabitch!”

The loud exclamation awakened Jay Dee in the backseat. His eyes flew open and he looked frantically around, as if not quite knowing where he was. Yuri laughed again, glancing over at Hoffman, who stared at the road ahead where it continued to rise into the green mountains in the distance.

It was beginning to wear on Hoffman. The grinning Russian, the thieving Soup, the idiot in the backseat. He couldn't wait to be shed of them all.

Montgomery Woodbine drew the map on the back of a flyer advertising replacement windows. He and Virgil were sitting at his kitchen table while Dusty stood a few feet away, just inside the back door. When they had arrived twenty minutes earlier she had refused the old man's offer of a chair. She had been antsy and nervous since they'd gotten up that morning at the farm. She had slept the night before on the couch in the living room, declining the use of one of the bedrooms upstairs, and after Virgil had gone up to bed, he'd heard her go out to his truck and return. He knew she had gone to retrieve the gun from the glove box. She was sleeping when he came down in the morning and the revolver was on the coffee table, within reach.

She had been quiet on the drive out to Woodbine's farm and Virgil was certain she was thinking about the boy. He tried to get her talking—about her work, her search for a house, anything—but she wasn't in the mood to converse. Maybe she thought she'd said too much the night before. Especially about Travis and the fact that Parson was the boy's father. She was good at keeping things inside. Virgil suspected that she didn't trust too many people, and why would she after what had happened? Besides, nothing she might say would change anything at this point. It was obvious she had made her mind up as to what she needed to do, and what she needed to do was keep Parson from the boy. It occurred to
Virgil that that was another reason she'd wanted the gun, not simply for self-preservation.

But if it came down to using the gun, she might lose her son either way. And surely she'd taken that into consideration too. But still she was keeping it inside. Virgil suspected it was a lonely time for her, taking it all on by herself.

At the kitchen table Woodbine was being very precise with the directions to Crow's Landing, and although Virgil knew by now that he was a thorough man by nature, he also suspected, as before, that the old man simply enjoyed having company. He'd offered them coffee when they arrived but they had both had their fill earlier. Still, the old man was taking his time and Virgil again wondered just how often his children visited him. Meanwhile, Dusty's impatience was filling the room.

“Once you get to Bass Lake,” Woodbine was saying, “you follow the south shore road running west, and about five miles along you'll come to a road that takes you to Carter's Bay. They'll be a sign says Carter's Bay. Turn there, it only goes the one way off the main road, and right away you have to go left. Should be another sign that says Crow's Landing. Used to be anyway. But you have to go left and it'll take you right there. It's a dead-end road. The cottage we used to rent is the second-last one and then you go a little piece and Pop's Camp is at the end. You can't miss it. There's a bunch of cabins and a big gymnasium where the boys played sports.”

Woodbine studied the map for a moment longer, then added a couple of details before finally handing it to Virgil. “This got something to do with your boat?”

“Not exactly,” Virgil said.

“Well, I hope you're not looking for Pop. I heard he passed away.”

“No,” Virgil said, standing up now.

“Just going on a holiday?” Woodbine persisted. He stood up as well and nodded in Dusty's direction. “Is this the wife?”

“I'm not the wife,” Dusty said quickly.

“No, that's not the wife,” Virgil said, smiling.

“We're going on a little fishing expedition,” she told the old man.

“You'll catch fish there,” Woodbine said. “At least we always did, my boys and me. Perch and pike, maybe some crappie. Nothing real big though. A lot of them lakes was fished out years ago.”

“Maybe there's a big one left,” Virgil said.

Dusty indicated the map in Virgil's hand. “Well?”

“Yeah, we should go.” As soon as he said it, Dusty turned and went out the door.

“That young woman's in a hurry,” Woodbine said.

“Yeah.”

“Women don't usually get that excited about fishing.”

“Depends on the fish,” Virgil told him.

Woodbine looked out the kitchen window, where Dusty was walking toward Virgil's truck, parked in the driveway. When she got there, she leaned against the front fender and looked expectantly back toward the house.

“Pretty girl,” the old man said. “Why'd you let her mark herself up with them tattoos?”

“I didn't have any say in it,” Virgil told him.

“Oh, I know what you mean,” Woodbine said, still watching out the window. “Women don't listen.” He turned toward Virgil. “I still like 'em though.”

“Me too,” Virgil said. “Thanks for the map.”

 * * *

The old man could have been a map maker if he hadn't gone into farming. Four hours later they stopped by the entrance
to a macadam road that ran north into the bush off the main highway south of Bass Lake, looking at a sign with an arrow on it indicating Carter's Bay. They had driven straight through, stopping once for gas and some fried chicken and fries for lunch. Dusty, in the passenger seat, kept the map in her hand throughout and now she held it up and pointed ahead a few hundred yards down the paved road, to where a gravel lane angled away into the trees.

“That's it,” she said.

As Virgil turned the truck onto the paved road, Dusty's cell phone rang. When she answered, Virgil stopped the truck, concerned she might lose the signal in the trees.

“Hey honey,” she said, and she listened for a moment. “Oh, we're outside the city, just taking care of a couple things.”

She glanced at Virgil while she listened again.

“That's Aunt Julie's call, dude,” she said. “Her house, her rules. You know better than to ask me that.” She waited again. “Virgil's busy driving the truck right now.” She paused. “Okay.” She handed the phone to Virgil, rolling her eyes slightly as she did.

“Hi,” he said.

“Do you know how to throw a curveball?” Travis asked.

Virgil smiled. “Yeah.”

“Will you show me sometime?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. Okay, bye.”

Virgil was still smiling as he handed the phone back to Dusty.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Guy stuff.”

She gave him a look, and Virgil put the truck in gear. They drove through the heavy brush that lined both sides of the
narrow roadway. The lane was just wide enough for one vehicle and when they met an SUV coming toward them, both pulled over into the tree branches to squeeze past. Within five minutes the lake came into view and from there the lane snaked along roughly parallel to the shoreline. There were cabins spotted here and there along the shore, and a few boat launches.

After a quarter hour, they arrived at the end of the road, where they came upon a ramshackle two-story lake house, with several cabins behind. A large field separated the main house and the cabins, with a baseball backstop at one end. A white building, obviously the gymnasium Woodbine had mentioned, stood at the opposite end of the field from the ball diamond. The property sloped downward from the gym to the lakeshore, where a half dozen sagging docks jutted out into the water.

The place appeared to be deserted. The wooden shutters on the main house were closed, plywood was nailed over the windows of the cabins. The paint on the buildings was faded and peeling, the grass of the ball field overgrown.

Access to the property was denied by a chain across the entrance, secured by padlocks to wooden posts at either end. There was a sign nailed to a large spruce tree just to the left of the entrance, made from a slab of rough lumber, painted red at one time, and on it in white letters they saw:

POP'S CAMP

They were sitting alongside a road that ran east from Route 3, looking down into a little valley where a crossroads featured a gas station and an establishment advertised as Dot's General Store.

They were lost.

They had been lost for nearly two hours, and Hoffman felt as if any moment he was going to lose his mind as well. It was apparent that Jay Dee no longer had any idea where Pop's Camp was located, if he ever did. He kept telling Hoffman to turn here, or turn there, and he would lean forward to look out the windshield for several moments before saying, “That didn't used to be here.”

As Hoffman's blood pressure was climbing, Yuri had remained as cool as a clam. At one point he had opened the bag of peanuts and eaten the entire contents, tossing the shells onto the floor at his feet. He was still nipping at the vodka from time to time and sharing it now with Jay Dee. Yuri seemed to be of the opinion that they would find the place, sooner or later. They had stopped at a dozen gas stations and stores and bait shops, asking directions, all to no avail. Not only did nobody know where Pop's Camp was, they hadn't talked to a single person who had even heard of the place. But Yuri remained unfazed.

“Now that store looks familiar,” Jay Dee said now, gazing down into the ravine.

“Every fucking thing you see looks familiar,” Hoffman snapped.

“All this shit up here is the same,” Jay Dee said. “Fucking outdoors.”

“Enough,” Yuri said. “Go down. We will go and ask Dot of the general store.”

“Right,” Hoffman said. “I'm sure Dot and Jay Dee are old friends.”

They drove down to the sprawling general store and parked in the gravel lot alongside. The place had a coffee shop built onto the store, and it sold live bait out back as well. But then, everybody sold live bait.

“I'll go scope the joint,” Jay Dee said.

“
I'll
check it out,” Hoffman told him. “I think these people up here are nervous of your kind.”

“What you mean—my kind?” Jay Dee demanded.

Hoffman opened the door. “You're a bright boy. Figure it out.”

He went into the store. There was a girl, maybe sixteen, behind the counter. Just Hoffman's luck; he would have preferred someone older, someone who'd been around the area for more than ten minutes. Of course the girl had never heard of Pop's Camp.

“Anybody else around here might know?” Hoffman asked.

“My girlfriend works in the coffee shop.”

Hoffman walked to the shop entrance to have a look, thinking he might find an old-timer sitting there having coffee, somebody with some knowledge that extended back a few years. The place was empty except for another teenager, standing behind the counter, looking at her cell phone.

“Never mind,” he said to the first girl, and left.

Hoffman walked out onto the store's wraparound veranda
and stood there, looking at the intersection before him. There were signs, maybe a dozen in all, mounted on posts all around the crossroads, signs with arrows pointed in every direction, indicating the way to this lake or that town or somebody's hunting camp.

Not only did Hoffman not know which sign might help him out, he hadn't even the slightest notion of which direction to take. The only person more ignorant than himself in this regard was the fucking wannabe rap star in the backseat. The man they'd brought along as a guide. Hoffman wondered if he was cursed. Would it have been too much to ask for Yuri to turn up a guy who actually
knew
where the camp was? Apparently hundreds of inner-city kids had been there, but Yuri managed to choose the muddled mess that was Jay Dee. Just once, Hoffman would have liked something to go exactly as it should. One time, just to see what it felt like.

When he got back in the car, he regarded his two traveling partners before starting the engine and driving over to the intersection. He stopped and indicated the array of signs, turning toward the backseat.

“Okay, dimwit,” he said wearily. “Anything there strike a chord?”

“Watch the name-calling, dog,” Jay Dee said, but he leaned forward and had a look. “Bass Lake!” he exclaimed at once. “That's it! How come I couldn't remember that?”

“An hour ago, you thought it was Stoney Lake,” Hoffman reminded him. “Before that you swore it was Lake Samuel.”

“It's Bass Lake, motherfucker, and I'll even tell you why. All the time we fished there, we never caught no bass. Perches, and pikes and sunfishes but no bass. And we were all the time wondering how that fucking lake got its name. I'm telling you it's Bass Lake.”

The sign for Bass Lake had an arrow pointing west, and beneath the arrow it said twenty-one miles. Hoffman glanced at Yuri and Yuri returned the look before turning to Jay Dee in the back seat. He smiled.

“This is why I bring you along,” he said. “I knew you would remember. Is hard to remember things sometimes from long ago. But always I have faith in you. Now we go to Bass Lake, and you will take us to Pop's Camp. Yes?”

“No problem,” Jay Dee said. “Just get me in the area, dog.”

When they arrived at Bass Lake a half hour later, Jay Dee was just as lost as before. They were parked by a gravel road that ran a couple hundred yards down to the water's edge and as Jay Dee complained again about how everything had changed since he'd last been there, Hoffman spotted an old man launching an aluminum boat into a shallow creek that emptied into the lake a short distance away.