The Followed Man (41 page)

At the Post Office the teller
told him his mail was due to be re­turned to the senders but
they'd kept it a few more days just in case he came in for it, so
there it was. He paid the postage due and took it out to his truck to
look at it, the rain tapping the hood and cab. First he lit a
cigarette; poison as antidote. His hands were wet from the rain and
the truck's door handle, moisture seeping into the pile of mail.
There were five letters from Jane Jones, a letter from the Avenger, a
letter from Ham Jones, a letter from Martin Troup, a windowed letter
for Helen from the American Associa­tion of University
Professors, material from Common Cause, the American Civil Liberties
Union, Senator Brooke, Orvis, Gokeys and Brookstone. Bills from Mobil
and Mastercharge. What he wouldn't bother to open he threw on the
floor next to his grocer­ies. Bills went into the dash
compartment. He was left with the real letters, the envelopes seeming
heavy with portent, threat, adhesiveness. Why this barrage from Jane
Jones? All he did was what the lady wanted. Lonely widower humps
horny housewife. Lord, Lord, these ragged wounded splintery women! He
read the letters according to the postmarked dates. The first four
were friendly and chatty. What she did Monday, how Ham had made love
to her in the morning while she thought of her indiscretion. She
really wanted to talk to him. Her period (she was off the pill
because of the bad things she'd heard) came Tuesday, sort of. Her
innards were a little out of whack. So were her emotions. She wanted
to see him, to talk to him. Where? When? Discretion advised: no
return address on notes to her, though she always got to the mail
first, no sweat. Love, Jane. Then: "Dear Luke, I told Ham, I had
to. I never heard from you. I didn't know he would take it the way he
did. He says he's never been unfaithful to me, 'really,' whatever
that means. . . ."

Ham's note:

What are your intentions now that you loused up our marriage? Jane,
my wife, is sick. Don't ever come around here again. You are not
welcome.

The Avenger's note:

Luke Carr:

You murder what you touch, but I will touch you last.

Mr. Death

Martin Troup's note:

Luke, I've just got to come to the conclusion that you are fucking
with me. I brought you to New York because I thought it would be good
for you, get you out of your doldrums. I knew about the acci­dent.
Hell, who didn't? But this character, Sevas, he says he "used"
to know you. Are you after my job, Old Buddy? I'd just like to know.
When an old friend turns out to be a slimy scheming shit, well, you
may not want to know it but you got to know it or you might step in
it and track it all over the rug. I also happened to gath­er the
information that you are jabbing his ex-wife. Too fucking neat, Old
Buddy, too fucking
neat.

M.

To try to explain anything to
any of them was simply, clearly, plainly beyond his powers. He could
not say the first word. And why should he try? He was the one
continually struck by astound­ing information. They would all
find out sooner or later, or they wouldn't find out sooner or later.
He refused to be in their world anymore. He had to get his
perishables back up the mountain and put away. He had been happy
there for more than a week.

The Avenger's note was literate;
the ear that had tested that sentence was too good, and that was
ominous, as though for the first time real intention and the fixing
of a time of revelation were at hand. He reached under the dash,
above a wire harness, where the holster hung, removed the pistol and
jacked a cartridge into the chamber, then replaced it, cocked, with
only the thumb safety on.

Ron Sevas, it seemed indicated,
was Louise's ex-husband. A con man all right; the man had always
shown a strange joy at being caught doing something sly or dishonest.
It seemed to energize him and raise him up onto a plane of intense
life. Luke had heard of him on and off over the years, notably as one
of the proprietors of the quick death of a famous magazine, ten years
ago. It would appeal to Ron, after all the years, to be in a position
to enter into some conning, manipulating, perhaps even
guilt-absolving strate­gy by using Luke's name. There was a kind
of glistening, boyish yet mingy survivorship about him that was
irresistible to some. To Louise, he supposed, and to R.I.C. in their
new, probably repre­hensible venture. It was just the place for
Ron to surface.

But let them all assume what
they wanted. He would write no instructive notes, make no calls. No
more explaining. The world of manipulation was out there, not where
he was going.

He drove around Leah square and
back toward Cascom on the high road. Somewhere on the flats the
yellow supercar, the hunchbacked Dodge, nose down, appeared behind
him in the swirls of mist from his wheels, then seemed to leap as it
passed him at almost twice his speed and disappeared in its own
stream­ing turbulence.

There was a quick thrill of
apprehension at the sight of Lester's car, but it went away. The rain
streamed against his windshield, then was thrust away by each beat of
the wipers. In the cab he was warm and dry, and he was going home,
the engine's familiar song of good, harnessed power all around him.
He went through Cas­com and up the mountain road, the trees
softened in the rain and mist. Soon he would have a roof on the cabin
and rain would be welcome, part of the weather for which he planned
and built.

He turned in the farm road and
drove down through the spruce, his wheels in rivulets, then out into
the more open land by the old farm foundations. Cascom Mountain was
gone behind gray. On the way down the hill toward the bridge he
looked for tire marks in the gravel that was still soft in places,
but the tracks he saw were probably his own. The bridge rumbled as he
crossed the brook. He still looked for the yellow car, but it was not
there. Jake was, and greeted him with a few howls of anger and
affec­tion.

"Hello,
Jake," he said. Jake looked at him, suddenly quiet, as if some
large thought had overcome him. "What are you thinking about,
friend?" Luke asked, thinking himself of that strange line
across which simple need and gratitude changed toward more
complicated emotion. He thought of wolves and jackals, their tri­bal
relationships, loyalties, orders of importance and dignity. Then man
and man, dog and man, the latter combination hardly fair to the dog.
A dog could run, and a dog had a nose. Jake was nearly over his
bruises. The lump on his ribs was now the size of a walnut, growing
smaller and harder. For a moment longer Luke squatted in the rain and
ran his hands over the dog's body, Jake still, unwagging, submitting
to medical examination, which was not petting or scratching and
elicited a different response. Then a pat on a flank said the
examination was over, and Jake could wag his tail again, turn away
and get out of the rain.

Luke put away groceries and
supplies, then took off his slicker and dried his hands before
getting out Shem's single-shot shotgun and the old Marlin .22 rifle.
He cleaned them both and lightly re-oiled them, Jake bright-eyed at
the looks and the metallic sounds, maybe even the odors, of the guns.
The old ammunition Luke would get rid of somehow, not by taking it to
the town dump with his other trash, however. He didn't want to try to
shoot it because of the mercuric primers and subsequent cleaning
problems, and wanted to give no one a dangerous fireworks display at
the dump when the fires that always licked through that maze of rat
tunnels reached the old cartridges.

It was early afternoon, the rain
beginning to lessen, when he looked out of the tent to see fragments
of the mountain appear, long writhing shawls of clouds moving
eastward over his head.

Jake, at his feet, sensed a
foreign presence across the field, growled and moved forward with his
hair up along his back.

Luke stepped back into the tent
and fastened the webbed belt and holster around his waist, then put
on his olive drab slicker over it, having a sharp memory that there
was a cartridge in the chamber, the pistol cocked and the thumb
safety on. He stepped evenly across the pressed-down grass in front
of the tent and stood among young pasture pines, searching the field
toward the trail, where Jake pointed. If someone were over there and
meant him harm, the weapon he carried was not the right one for that
distance. A rifle, any rifle, even the .22, would be more effective.

He didn't really believe someone
was over there, but he had to take it into consideration—a
small fear and a dullness. Jake moved slowly forward, growling, his
tail down between his legs. Whatever it was, Jake thought it larger
than a beagle. If it were a bear, it would have heard Jake and
departed. Jake would not be afraid of a deer, but then he must have
merely heard something, or the scent had come to his nose in a
confusing eddy of wind, be­cause the main push of the wind came
upon him laterally, from the west, and Jake pointed south toward the
trail.

Following Jake, Luke moved from
the pines to a group of young aspen a little higher than his head. He
would be visible, but not a clear target, and a moving one. Jake
glanced back at him for courage and went ahead. When they came to the
trail the evi­dence had vanished and Jake relaxed. Maybe a tree
had twisted and cracked in the wind, or a branch, heavy with water,
had fallen and made a sound only Jake had heard.

No one had been there, Jake
said. He took a few casual casts back and forth and then said by his
expression that they ought to go hunting—a bright new look.

"No, come on," Luke
said, and went back to the tent. There was a hollow place in him, now
gradually filling because of the usual, normal expectations and
probabilities. But he had felt excitement and a kind of angry fear.

It was unfair. He went through a
smooth convulsion of self-pity and anger, aware of the names of the
emotions he felt. Had what he had done in this life justified the
treatment he had received and was receiving? Did he kill what he
touched? Was this justice? Infantile residues; the breast had been
removed long ago, and he had been of the world too long to believe in
justice. That lack of belief was not merely theoretical; it had been
gained from experi­ence. He was not a hurtful man, he believed,
and yet his presence seemed to hurt people. He did what they asked,
and then they were hurt, but he didn't mean to hurt. All he meant to
do was to survive. There were, he hoped, enough miracles for him in
his woods, or looming over his bald mountain. Or he was owned by the
woods and the mountain.

His children had been mysteries
to him, their power over him having something to do with their
perfection in spite of the roughness and vulnerability of their
characters. They needed him and tolerated him. Helen was the only
woman he wanted to make children with. She died at forty-two, Gracie
at twelve, Johnny at fifteen. No scenes from those lives; it was
forbidden, except in dreams, where he had no authority.

It was as if he wrote the notes
from the Avenger and mailed them to himself.

You fool, what will you do when
your cabin is finished and you have to walk in the door?

The dog lay on the towel it had
appropriated for its bed, breathing with a slight snore, now
trembling and paddling its feet in a dream. A happy dream, the tail
said, the feet now stilled. Love for this good dog, the recognition
of it, opened in him frighten-ingly. He had to solve that problem,
then. He had a hundred-dol­lar bill in his wallet—more,
probably four times more, than Jake was worth, a calculation from
another world. The money was probably worth four times more to Lester
Wilson than it was to him. Equations, problems, the brutal, coarse
weight of Lester Wil­son. Such a man could always surprise.

He administered Jake's half-pill
and gave him a can of dog food. When Jake saw him leave in the truck
he didn't try to follow; any half-intelligent beagle knew you
couldn't outrun a truck. He drove down the mountain road steeled, he
hoped, for this task. When he came to the Sturgis house he was
startled to see Lester's yellow Dodge parked next to Coleman's
Toyota. It was more than disconcerting, because these people should
all be where they ought to be, revolving in their own courses. But he
had come down to see Lester and he would.

Coleman came to the door in a
bathrobe and bare feet, his pale, wrinkled face and moist blue eyes
showing some kind of strain and apology. "I was about to take a
shower," Coleman said. He be­gan to move aside, as if to
invite Luke in, then stopped that move­ment just too late for
Luke not to understand.

"Is Lester Wilson here?"
Luke said.

"No. Claire does some
housecleaning for us. Lester, presum­ably, is at his trailer
babysitting and getting sloshed on beer. You'll probably find him
there."

"Thanks," Luke said.
He began to turn away, then asked, "How's Louise?"

"Much better. They're
letting her come home tomorrow."

"They?"

"Northlee Hospital, in its
collective wisdom. Louise ingested too many pills with her booze,
something she does occasionally, and accomplished what is called, for
lack of the exact truth, 'an acci­dental overdose.'"

"My God! I didn't know
that!"

"Well, she's all right this
time. I've got to rush, now, Luke. Why not stop back around five?
I'll give you a drink and fill you in on the Perils of Louise."

It was three-thirty. "All
right. Thanks," Luke said.

Louise was a little crazy, but
no matter how clear and simple the indications had been, he would
have nothing to do with a more precise diagnosis. He didn't want to.
He drove on toward Lester's trailer on the River Road. In what
measure couldn't he under­stand suicide? She was a healthy,
attractive animal, possessing all of her senses, and the world was
green and fascinating, its lights, temperatures, shades, odors and
winds changing and forever new. She had her clay to make into the
nearly eternal, as he had his wood and mortar. She had, with the
lovely shapes and textures of her body, helped him so easily. But she
must see it all through different filters and lenses. To make a
statement that one might like to die. Of course he had no one to make
that statement to, not anymore. With a feeling of superiority that
shamed him he thought that if he were to make that statement it would
be once, and final; if he ended himself it would not be an act of
communi­cation at all, but the shutting of a door, no one on the
other side but the light of day. But a young, healthy woman in her
thirties, with the equipment, the instruments—no words for the
miracles of perception. He would love her if she would let him
(shame: take your small coin and spend it elsewhere). There were
places he could not go. He couldn't dive that deep. But maybe he
could help her. Then a voice said clearly, the same small voice that
in other circumstances told him not to have another drink, that he
should stay away.