The Followed Man (47 page)

He couldn't take Jake with him
for the whole day, or didn't want to have to deal with
Jake's needs, so left him with meaningless reassurances and drove on
down into Leah. Here he remembered that the pistol was still under
his dash, and that in Massachusetts there was a mandatory, supposedly
non-avoidable one-year prison sentence for having an unlicensed gun
in your possession. Signs on the highways leading into the state made
this clear enough, and he certainly didn't need the worry of breaking
that law. Then, as if it were a breakthrough of the mind compara­ble,
say, to the formulation of the theory of relativity he realized that
Joe the Mover could easily put the pallets containing his household
goods on a truck and bring them to Cascom and to his cabin door. He
wouldn't have to go to Wellesley at all. He made a telephone call and
it was arranged. Maybe his brain was growing weak from the solitude,
the altitude or the company, mainly, of a beagle.

He went to the bank and got some
cash, then stopped at the Post Office. He really expected to get
nothing but bills and junk, as he had last time; no one should want
to write to him, none of the living, not if they had any sense. He
wrote to no one. Nothing could make him write a letter. When he'd got
out the piece of paper for a target he'd noticed a light frost of
mildew on the black leatherette of his typewriter case.

He went through his mail and
found nothing personal, no let­ter even from the Avenger. It was
not there, the elite typeface on the stamped envelope. It had been so
long since he'd seen one of those envelopes, and he had done so many
things, the memory of them had actually begun to fade, as dreams
faded.

He wanted to be back at his
cabin, on his land, as if that place were a sanctuary, Jake an
incorruptible sentry, the woods his out­er fortifications.

He drove back toward Cascom with
too much urgency, as though his trip to Wellesley would have been a
disaster and he had, by a quirk of insight or luck, barely avoided
it, or almost avoided it. He couldn't be certain until he returned to
his safe, good place. He drove faster than usual, with an anxiety
that seemed to restrict his peripheral vision, he was so intent on
get­ting there. He was going over sixty on the high road,
thinking only of where he must go, when strange signals came to him
as a distraction, not at first concentrated upon at all. Flashing
head­lights or reflections, then a siren; then he looked more
deliberate­ly into his rearview mirrors and a green car was
behind him, strobic blue lights coming not from the top as they would
have from the bubblegums of a police car, but from behind the grille.
But strobic blue meant police, and he pulled over to the shoulder,
cursing, saying out loud, "You asshole! You idiot!" What a
stupid time to get caught speeding, by whatever sort of police had
caught him. He hated being caught this way, for any reason, which was
why he was always alert for police. Even in his hurry he couldn't
understand how he'd failed to notice the green car behind him.

He opened the cab door to get
out, and the passenger in the other car got out too, a short, thick
man in green work clothes, wearing pale yellow shooting glasses, a
big leather holster on his belt. It was George Bateman. "Luke!"
George called, and mo­tioned him to come over. As he went to the
green car he recog­nized the driver as young Jim Pillsbury, the
game warden. George tried to keep a stern, professional face, but
there was a marvelous excitement in him. He opened the rear door of
the car and got in the back seat, motioning Luke into the front. A
radio hissed and barked fragments of words and numbers, as if doors
were con­stantly shutting in the middle of sentences, cutting
off, along with breath, the necessary pauses for understanding and
acknowledg­ment.

"Lester Wilson,"
George said. "He went crazy and killed his family, shot his wife
and the two kids, shot his brother-in-law in the stomach, though he's
still alive. Shot himself, too, or tried to, but he botched it up."

"What?" Luke said. He
heard all this but he was still getting over the fact that they were
not after him.

"Shot his ear off or
something. Rhode Island police got that from the sister-in-law.
Anyways, he come back here before they could catch him, State Police
seen his car—that yellow hopped up Dodge—on a 1-89 off
ramp down around Baker. 'Course he's got the radio, too, so's he
could hear everything, took the back roads, most likely. Armed and
dangerous. Fugitive warrant. They figure he's somewheres in Cascom,
is where he's come to hole up, where he knows the woods. He don't
know much else, that's for certain."

"He
shot
them?"

"Ayuh," Jim Pillsbury
said. "It ain't that rare. Kind of out of my line of work,
though."

"Husband shoots estranged
wife and children, kills self," George said. "Only that
dumb shit Lester, you got to figure he couldn't finish himself off.
Anyways, you'll find a State Police roadblock up ahead. We're going
around the Leah side of the mountain—old logging roads, camps
and all, some ain't even on the geodetic map."

"They can't find his car?"

"Not yet," Jim
Pillsbury said. "When they do they'll bring on the bloodhounds
and it'll be over shortly. They'll be a helicopter look­ing too—I
just heard that on the radio."

"Luke, if I was you,"
George said, "I'd keep me a gun handy till they flush Lester
out. Never know where he'll show up. Just want­ed to warn you, is
all." George's thick, compressed head shone with sweat, his gray
bristles shining. "Killed his wife, his boy and the baby. Shot
'em!" His excitement made him tremble beneath the stolid flesh.
His hand crossed his lap below Luke's vision, probably to touch his
holstered pistol. The thin metal clips of a gun rack came over the
top of the front bench seat, and Luke's hand, over the back of the
seat, felt the steel of a racked gun.

Luke got out and they made a
U-turn, tires whining.

At the roadblock, a State Police
car and some red rubber dunce caps, he was questioned and warned by a
large trooper, then allowed to go on. He turned on his AM radio to
country music. He wasn't sure where the local station was on the
band, thought he had it once when a bulletin stated that a "massive
manhunt" was on in New Hampshire, but the station turned out to
be in Wentworth Junction, Vermont. The rest of the information was
about the same as George's.

The yellow Dodge was around
Cascom somewhere, no doubt. He believed the information. Where else
would Lester go? He was not about to run to Rio, or hijack a plane to
Algeria. He'd tried to shoot himself; Luke believed that, too. On the
way up the moun­tain he passed a pickup, men with guns in the
back. They waved, and he waved. He looked for the yellow Dodge too,
but had no idea what he'd do if he saw it. He wouldn't turn around
now, he didn't think, even to report it—or maybe he would, he
didn't know. Lester must have got the car back from Claire, maybe the
day he'd shot her and the children. Christ, did all that really
hap­pen? It happened every day; why did he have to think it
strange, even for a few transitional minutes, before it became fact
hard as rock.

But there was no sign of Lester.
When he reached his valley, his cabin, shed and equipment were
untouched, waiting for him, though Jake was gone. He wished Jake were
there, but Jake had his daily travels to attend to, his favorite
rabbits to exercise.

Now that he had a real, an
official, reason to wear the pistol belt, he didn't want to, and left
it in the truck. He did load the .35 cali­ber Marlin, however.
The day was mild clear September, the leaves darker and a little dry
now toward the end of summer, crisp against the blue. A small breeze
twirled the round aspen leaves on their stems, as though it touched
only them. He thought to listen for Jake's distant voice, but heard
only birds—bluejays complaining back of the spruce, a robin's
long melody and the five clear notes of a white-throated sparrow,
that wistful plaint that was really a warning.

He had some work to do outside,
some shoveling around his basement bulkhead, work too close for the
tractor, so he did that until noon, then wheeled some humus over,
spread it and seeded the dark stuff with bluegrass and rye before
dampening it with the hose. In a few days it would all be pale green
needles.

The man hid somewhere in the
woods, in an unused camp or even in his car, where he could listen on
the police and CB bands to the coded words of pursuit he must
understand very well. They were after him and would find him. Maybe
at this moment he put his revolver against his head and tried again
to keep it there as he pulled the trigger, the crisp metal of the
sear sliding its fraction of an inch, the hammer spring's energy
waiting, the mass of the hammer about to begin its fall toward the
silver primer. Then the real energy. If he'd tried to do it once and
blasted his ear, he must be mostly deaf on that side, burned black
because he wasn't ready for darkness at the last tic of intent. Then
he must have been called to his home, thinking that if he could get
back to the woods and mountains of his childhood he could find his
way out of the present, back to a time when he wasn't yet what he
was.

The day was changing, the blue
over the mountain sifting into white, as though the blue were the
overcast and the white of the high mist the base color of the sky.
Weather always came over the mountain, masked by dark spruce and rock
until it was nearly overhead. The breeze had died, and he thought he
heard, far up the mountain, Jake's excited yelp. He waited,
listening, but it didn't come again. Then, as he turned to wash his
hands at the hose, he thought he heard it again.
Ki-yi, ki-yi.
Silence, then just as he'd stopped trying to listen,
Roup,
elp,
so far off it seemed lonely. He wished Jake were here, as
though the small dog were a missing possession he needed to have safe
here with him. There might be intruders in the wilderness up there
inclined to hurt an animal so intent on his pursuit he saw nothing
but a haze of brush and branches leading him through the tunnel of
scent. Luke would go up the trail and see if he could hear Jake's
voice more clearly and perhaps intercept him somewhere on the
rabbit's long circle. He might even shoot the rabbit for Jake, though
the season didn't be­gin until another two weeks. He was not a
breaker of most laws, though, so he wouldn't take the shotgun. Bear
season was on, but he doubted if he would shoot a bear, not now, even
if a miracle of chance and timing happened and a bear let himself be
seen. The woods were full of their bounty of meat, but the meat was
not prisoner and had its ways of avoiding death.

Because it weighed less than the
other guns he took the pistol, fixing the webbed belt around his
waist with its brass connector, the holster and gun a familiar weight
at his hip, and climbed the Carr trail, up from the hiss and splash
of the brook. Several times he thought he heard Jake's voice, but the
sounds, filtered by the trees, would not grow closer. First they
seemed to come from the mountain, which he could no longer see
through the trees along the leaf-drowned stone walls; then from the
brook valley below and to his left. The distant cries were never
quite clear enough to be sufficient evidence to leave the trail and
bushwhack into a climb or a descent.

It seemed more and more possible
that Jake could be in danger. Maybe it was just the anxiety of the
days, and of this day, but life was too fragile, Luke knew. The young
boy with the straight black hair and ears like cup handles, his white
look at a life that ended soon, shot by his father. Shot by his
father. And the baby, who never knew what hit it. An estranged
wife—what sort of mon­strosity was an "estranged"
wife?

Was that Jake, over there on a
ledge, the little dog frantically casting and calling? He left the
trail and pushed through black­berries and juniper. Just to be
nearby, in the vicinity of the dog, might be protective enough. He
heard a yelp that was certain, though it might have been a yelp of
pain or fear. Maybe Jake had hit a strand of old barbed wire strung
taut by the growth of the trees that held it, or a sharp broken
branch had stuck into his soft lips or his eye. When Jake was on a
rabbit, the cool, dignified rab­bit loafing, turning, easily
keeping far ahead of the noisy pursuit, he had no time to be careful.
He was the one driven, locked by genes into his single mission. Why
couldn't Jake be more careful, though? No one was careful; only he
was careful. He climbed up the side of a gulley, not hearing as the
sticks and brush crunched under his boots. A wand of hemlock brushed
lightly over his face, but in it was a sharp dead stick that stung
his cheek and made his right eye water. He was sweating, hot along
his back where his shirt stuck to him like tape, needing still more
altitude up through the thick saplings and hemlocks so he could stop
and try to listen. The trees here stifled his hearing. He could stop
his crashing now and listen, but he wasn't high enough. A dead branch
held him back with the insistence of a turnstile, and when he broke
it off he thought he'd simultaneously heard a shot—his luck to
break the branch at the precise time of the shot. He wasn't certain
about its direction.

What he saw in his mind as he
climbed were some local, self-appointed posse-vigilantes going
through the woods, spread out, shotguns and rifles held at the ready,
eager to shoot. A strange dog then appears and the instinct, the
eagerness of the excited man is too much so he shoots and the number
one buckshot whacks across the woods and one pellet travels through
the body of the dog; the man then shouts ecstatically that he got a
dog that was running deer. "Ran this little spikehorn right by
me, near as me to you!" The dog writhes in the hemlock needles,
gut-shot and screaming, so the fellow points his gun at the head and
finishes it off, just as Luke appears.