Lauchlin of the Bad Heart (35 page)

“You in there, Cooper?” His voice was tight and thin but he couldn’t help it, he wanted to yell out, not speak calmly, reasonably. “Hey. Listen. You wanted to fight. Here I am. My fists, that’s all I’ve got. No gun, nothing. We’re boxers. Remember?”

He waited, tiring. How much did he have left? “I’m coming in,” he said. “Don’t shoot. All right?” He moved inside the doorway and frisked the wall for a switch, his eyes blinking wide and rapidly in the sudden light. Shaking with tension, he lowered the club, released a short laugh. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before he opened them.

The bed looked slept in, a plaid blanket on a bare mattress had been tossed aside, and again cigarettes, squashed in a sardine tin, ashes and spent matches scattered around it. Dried mudprints on the floor, a pair of rubber kneeboots kicked under the bed. A candle stub
in a saucer of hardened wax, a roll of toilet paper partly unspooled. Lauchlin leaned his head back against the wall, his strength seemed to be spilling out of him, but he pulled himself up. Was Cooper not in the house at all, had he fled? That was possible, and disheartening. He checked the other two bedrooms recklessly as if he had gained Power now, switching lights on briefly then off, more like a bed check than a pursuit. He came down the stairs with deliberate steps, undisguised. At the bottom he turned toward the sound of the kitchen radio. The pop music had given way to something orchestral. A cello cadenza ran like a razor along his nerves: someone had changed the station. So. He’d left the club upstairs, but what use was it anyway?

The few steps to the kitchen seemed a very long way but it was the direction he was determined to go. “I’m not armed,” he said, not loudly. He stood in the doorway at the edge of the lamplight. Nothing looked different that he could tell. A dirty dishtowel flung on the wooden table. Had the plastic water jug been there? He wasn’t sure. But to his right the cellar door was ajar, it had been shut when he passed it coming in, he was almost certain, his whole body tightened. The opening breathed out a cold sharp smell of clay, wet, musty, it was more cave down there than cellar as he remembered it, and it chilled him. Clement would be closed away in such an earth. He let some seconds pass, the music softened into a gentle movement. He wasn’t going to turn his back to him now, to run or hide. The angry fear that had charged through him upstairs had burned away into a kind of calmness that made him feel stronger, more able. He reached for the cellar door but just before his hand touched the knob it burst wide and he took a blow to the face that sent him crashing backward to the floor, blind with pain, sprawled, a red flash behind his eyes that for an instant felt maybe like Clement’s had. The shock stupefied him, clenched his voice, he could only moan, taste blood warm and fresh, and as his sight returned he saw first above him a bore hole, then up a gun barrel to a face half-hidden behind the breech. That’s what had hit him, not a bullet but a gunstock, flush on
the nose, the blood ran over his lips, into his mouth, and he tried to sit up, but, dizzied, he lay back again, listening to the man above him.

“Get up real slow and sit in that chair, there, up next to you.” Cooper’s voice was excited but low.

Lauchlin’s eyes had teared up, he wiped at his nose, snorted it clear and felt it filling again, it was swelling fast. He spat on the floor and pulled himself up into a kitchen chair.

“Not the first time you been on your back like that, eh?” Cooper said, keeping the rifle sighted on him.

Lauchlin pinched his nostrils and let his head fall back. “It wasn’t a rifle butt,” he said, his voice hoarse, nasal, his eyes on the ceiling. The worst moments were fluttering away: the expected shot had not come, now it wouldn’t be a stunning surprise and then blackness, he had some time. But he mustn’t pass out, his head droned like a bad piper. The energy that had driven him up the hill, into the house, the rooms, was spent, and there’d be no reviving it. The blood slowed, he snuffed it down as he sat himself upright. “You feel better now?”

“Feel better yet when I’m on my way out that door. Someone send you up here? The Mounties?”

“They’d have been here long ago if they knew. No, it’s just you and me.”

Cooper lowered the rifle to his waist. He wore a dirty camo rain parka, its patch pockets bulging, probably with supplies. His face was dark with whiskers, a scraggly moustache disguising his mouth, his hair snagged in wild directions as if he’d pushed through thickets.

“So you just stopped by for a visit, storekeeper?” he said. Lauchlin relaxed a little, willing his heart to ease up. He grabbed the dishtowel and pushed it to his nose, spoke through the funky cloth.

“I had a hunch. I know this house.”

“I know it myself. And a few others on this mountain.” Cooper nodded toward the outdoors. “Going to hogtie me and haul me in, were you? Is that it?”

“You wanted a rematch. Remember?”

“And now you’re down for the count, without a cut man either.”

“Boxing wasn’t it? Not rifle butts.”

“It’s way beyond fists, storekeeper. Way.”

“Seems it is. You wouldn’t have a little rum or something handy?” Lauchlin said.

“You Scotch, you always expect hospitality. Storekeeper, I want you to tighten the end of that around your wrist.” Cooper pointed the muzzle at a length of light rope coiled on the table with a bowline loop in one end.

“You going to shoot me then or later?” Lauchlin dropped the bloody towel.

“Just do it. What I’m going to do is none of your business for a while. Now put both hands behind you there.”

This was the time to resist, to make a move, there might not be another, but he had nothing left to make a move with, not now, Cooper had hold of the rope already as he sidled behind the chair, still gripping the rifle at the trigger guard, and with expert swiftness he captured Lauchlin’s other wrist, drawing the loop tight several times before securing the line to the back spokes and down to the legs. After he had tied Lauchlin’s left ankle to the chair the rope ran out, he left the other leg free.

“Good old oak chair,” he said, coming back around the table. He put his back against the sink, set the rifle carefully on the counter while he rooted inside his jacket. The radio music swelled and he switched it off.

“I heard your truck down below. Thanks for bringing it to me. Keys in it?”

“People know that truck.”

“In the middle of the night, who cares?” Meticulously, Cooper laid a soiled cigarette paper along finger and thumb, then from a little makings bag he tapped a careful line of tobacco into it, licked an
edge, rolled it and and took it in his lips. He struck a wooden match and dragged deeply on the misshapen cigarette. “They won’t know it where I’m headed anyway.”

“Can I spit?”

Cooper laughed and blew out smoke. “You need a bucket by your stool there, boxer. Go ahead. I won’t be tracking up that floor except on the way out.”

Lauchlin cleared his throat, spat on the linoleum. “You been on foot all this time?” he said.

“Some. Wasn’t on horseback.”

“Bicycle?”

“Not useful, off the road.”

“You must be in good trim.”

“Fighting trim.” He grinned through a stream of smoke, keeping his eyes on Lauchlin. They were hard and dark above the lamp, but raw with fatigue.

“You didn’t give Clement much of a fight.”

Cooper nodded slowly. He took up the rifle, cradled it in one arm. “His skull was thick. Took this to get through it.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I don’t have to make sense, storekeeper. Remember that. We’re past sense, you and me.” Whatever rage had infused him that foggy morning when he emerged behind Clement’s house was not evident now. Surviving, escape had taken him up. “I wanted to shut their yaps, over there in the courtroom. He sued me, for Christ’s sake!” He shook his head, laughed, looked at the floor. “Sued me.”

Lauchlin wanted to say, It was my idea, I put that in his head. The risk thrilled him for a few moments, shoving his face in Cooper’s like that. But the urge was quickly overwhelmed: Clement might be living if he’d never brought it up, never said, Take him to court.

“What was it like that you had to shoot him through the eye?”

Cooper straightened up. He dropped the cigarette behind him and it hissed sharply in the sink. “Why would I tell you, storekeeper? It’s between me and him, and it’s over. He knew as soon as he saw me it was over. It was in his face.”

“What’s in my face then?” Lauchlin said.

A thin smile spread through Cooper’s moustache. “Age,” he said. “Just look at yourself, in that chair.”

“Anyone can pull a trigger, any little man has the muscle for that.”

“But he’s got to get to where he can pull it first.”

“Are you there, still?”

“I’m leaving in a minute. You’re not.”

“What about his wife?”

“What about her? She’s blind. I didn’t ask her to marry him, did I?”

Cooper patted the pockets of his parka, then peered out the window. “Won’t be anybody come by here till deer time, storekeeper. They’ll be out there where the apples are.”

“Hunters used to shoot from my granny’s windows, after she was gone.”

“Did they raise them first?”

“No. They didn’t.”

Cooper twisted the lampshade slightly, turning the light away from the window. “I can’t understand that behaviour, coming into a house like that.”

“You’re here.”

“There’s no glass on the floor, is there?”

“Not yet.”

Lauchlin wanted to say more but he swallowed it: he had no edge of any kind, no advantage, he could only cross a line with this man and die and he wasn’t sure where the line was with him, maybe he was across it already. He tried to knead the numbness from his hands
bound tightly to the chair back. He flicked his tongue at blood creeping from his nostrils.

“Keys are in the ignition,” he said. He tensed as Cooper stepped quickly behind him, tugged hard on the knots, stepped away again.

“They’ll find you before they find me,” he said by the lamp. “You’ll be damned skinny by then.”

“Okay, champ. I’m ready.”

Cooper yanked the lamp chain and the room went dark. There was no sound but the chain ticking back and forth, and a wooden creak as Lauchlin shifted a little in the chair: he had to be straight up, chin high. “The light was a trap,” Cooper said, his voice lower, “you flew to it like a moth.” As the after-glare faded, Lauchlin could see the dark shape of him against the window glass, not moving, as if he were weighing something. “I was out there, storekeeper. I could’ve shot you when you reached the house, any step of the way.”

“Why not?”

“It’s funny when something gets under your skin. It works and works at you. I had to get rid of it. After it was over with, I was okay. But only for a little while.” Then he was gone. The door closed firmly, the lock clicked. Footsteps passed by the sink window quickly toward the lower woods. Lauchlin slumped, chin to his chest. Jesus.

He remained that way until his breathing was calm. He could get no air through his nose, swollen and crusted with blood, barely a trickle now. He worked his arms and hands and shoulders in a twitching dance but the rope had him, he and the chair were one. He didn’t want to tip over, crash on the cold linoleum where the rats might run. There was a wind up now, a soft howling that rose, fell to whispers, rose again about the house. Colder. His sweat had cooled. A spasm of shivering shook him and he clamped his jaw until it passed. His mouth was dry, he could barely swallow. Mrs. MacKinnon, that day he and his dad came up here, she’d given him a glass of cool buttermilk, right there at that
door she’d handed it to him, nothing like it, she said, for thirst. Hot day, close, you’d want that wind here. He could be here for days, weeks, whatever would be left of him. Trussed to a chair, putrefying, the man he was after still loose somewhere. But if Cooper took the pickup, if he got on the highway for long, they’d get him, sooner than later. He’d lasted because he knew this mountain, where he could hide, stash supplies, move about under its cover. But if he hid Lauchlin’s truck, or if they caught him and he never told them where he stole it…

The moon that had climbed behind him up the hill played shadows across the windows, patterns of leaf and branch, bowing near, fading back. Not much of its light reached into the kitchen, and how long would it last anyway? Clouds were on the move. He tried to flex some slack into the rope but the effort suggested panic, he heard his incoherent whispering and quit. What was it with kitchens? Hearths of our lives, joys and heartaches. He’d need a bit of light, a sharp edge to back up to, a drawer might have a knife, he had one foot to manoeuvre with, but not yet, not now. Ease back, rest a little. Oh God. No ring defeat could rank with this. If they found him here, Tena would know, Morag too, it would be all over the island, Lightning Lauchlin dead on his stool, foxed by the killer he’d come to catch. With a surge of resistance he scraped the chair backward but a linoleum crack caught the legs and tipped him suddenly toward the floor and he had to lunge forward and thump the chair down, steady it. Lord, he might’ve whacked his head, lights out.

With little to distract him but pain, he couldn’t keep his mind away from that early morning he’d driven to Clement and Tena’s house. Even if he’d had a good look into the backyard, both man and bicycle would’ve been hidden, waiting. Even for Clement, coming out the back door, there were no signs that would have made any sense to him, nothing odd. Just the ordinary sights of his morning, reduced in fog. How could Lauchlin himself have noticed anything amiss? Stepping out into that sunless morning, the only grit in Clement’s
eye would have been the flat tire on the van. And what did he blame for that? Bad luck. Nails or glass or any sharp thing, but not a man hunkered in the woods, watching him. But suppose Lauchlin had stopped in just to say hello at least, that might have been enough, him in the driveway, he’d have seen the flat tire on his way to the door, and after some coffee and maybe a little time talking with Tena, if she came downstairs, hearing him there, he would have helped Clement mount the spare, and maybe Clement and he would have left the house together and driven away down the driveway at the same time. He might have saved Clement. For that day, at least. Maybe longer, who knew, he might have thrown that bastard off, hiding in the woods or wherever he crouched, delayed him, thwarted him, changed his mind. Like he did tonight. Didn’t he? They both had boxed, how much had that meant?