The Lost Highway (32 page)

Then he thought that there was not a day during the fair for the past twenty years that he did not see Old Poppy’s truck going by—you could hear it coming a mile or two away.

Strangely and desperately, he missed its sound.

He decided he would change the tires. He would go to Burton’s the next afternoon and say he had decided to get the tires on sale. Burton always had a tire sale in the fall. That would be reasonable. No one would have anything to say about it. It was just the nephew coming over to get tires on his uncle’s truck, growing a goatee and teaching at the university. Yes, that was it. He believed that Markus was a nice young man, but would not suspect him. He needed to distance himself from Leo. In fact he saw this as the ultimate test, to distance himself from Leo. He had the ticket again, and he could say once he got the tires changed that he had had nothing at all to do with Leo. As a matter of fact, whatever Leo said could be challenged.

Nothing he could do could bring Poppy back to life. He was not the one who had used the knife. In fact, Leo had bullied him into sharing the ticket!

But this is what he now knew. It was his ineffectualness that had caused him to get mixed up with Leo, to become what he had become. It was that same ineffectualness that prepared him for a world in which he didn’t belong, and pampered him long and hard into believing he was indispensable to it. That’s why he had played with fire over the ticket. He couldn’t see his way clear not to be indispensable. How godawful. Worse, he realized, he could not get tires for the truck.

He went back home in a daze.

That night he started to go over the course he had to teach at community college. Yes, as he went over his notes and the texts he was going to tell his students to buy—Cicero, Aristotle, Plato—he realized it was a course where everything he had wanted to say about the crumbling moral structure of those fallen puppet popes could be said.

He had imagined all last spring (from the time her picture was in the paper for her provincial prize for mathematics and history) how he would channel Amy’s great intelligence, and how her mother would come to appreciate him. He had even imagined that there might be a showdown of some kind with the school board over this child and how bright she was, and he would take her out of school completely. He imagined sooner or later Amy being influenced by him, and him alone, instead of her father, and leaving the school to be instructed by him. He imagined Minnie coming to thank him, Sam being chagrined, and Minnie saying, “I think I’ll stay here the night.” And Alex going to get bedding and making her comfortable, like a good friend. Finally, Minnie and Amy would move in with him, and he would have to have a confrontation with Sam. Sam, of course, would hang his head, and say, “I didn’t understand!”

This was what he had thought about over the summer, on those walks. That is why he had taken that very walk on the night he met Burton. He was still thinking that Minnie would be his!

This is what he had dreamed of for years. And the worst of it now?

Why, of course, Amy’s name was on the student list. With a little note about why she wanted to take the course (all prospective students had to write one) and describing her summer, and the fun she was having, and how she had tamed a skunk, and how she was helping take care of Fanny Groat.

—

T
HEN SOMETHING HAPPENED ON WHICH EVERYTHING ELSE
hinged. It was not just the return of the heat, nor the sound of the bells for church. But something else. Yes, the heat was over, except it refused to go. It clung to the late summer foliage, and stated its case among the weeds in the yard. The small garden lay trampled, and yet the tick of insects was still evident among the paling flower beds. There was the pervasiveness of warmth even with the smell of cooling air, and in the evening certain walkers came into billows of warm gusts as they moved along the hidden pathways.

But as forlorn as Alex was, he did not know a cat and mouse game was about to start, which would make the previous days look sublime.

The seventh morning after Poppy Bourque went missing Alex woke to a loud knock on the door. It was the police officer Markus Paul. He stood like a form not quite understood in Alex’s consciousness. Why would he be here—what would make him turn up? For a moment Alex did not know if he should open the door.

But he had to.

When Alex opened the door Markus smiled as if they were friends from long ago, and as if the meeting the other night between them had re-established this bond. That was it, the meeting the other night was indispensable, it seemed, to the meeting now. And it was as if this bond, like all bonds between friends, was somehow private and gracious. The smile said all of this in a second. And Markus came in.

“I think we might have an answer to the problem,” he said.

“What problem?” Alex asked. It was not yet nine in the morning—and why would a man come to him so early and say I think we have an answer to the problem—as if he had something to do with it? This was indication enough of the peril he was in. Suddenly he was wide awake and quite frightened.

“Oh, we picked someone up last night—who they think might have done something to Poppy.”

He looked at Alex a long moment, and Alex was almost ready to ask if it was Leo Bourque when by luck Markus said, “I am wondering, did you know your uncle’s house was broken into—you haven’t been over there lately?”

“No,” Alex said. “When was it broken into?”

“I was sure you knew—but anyway, last night we caught him.”

“Who?” Alex said.

“John Proud.”

“Who?”

“John Proud. We knew someone was in there—but you see, here’s the thing, he’s—can I sit down?”

“Of course,” Alex said.

They both sat at the small table in the ever-so-tiny kitchen so their knees were almost touching, and Alex felt uncomfortable with Markus’s eyes resting upon him.

Then Markus continued speaking: “The thing is, he broke into Poppy Bourque’s house—and a few others. My colleagues believe he was the one who is responsible for old Mr. Bourque disappearing. He was on a rampage over the last two and a half weeks—he was taking a lot of cooked meth—do you understand—you cook it up with household products, battery acid, hydrochloric acid, cold tablets, things of that nature. We are seeing it more on the river—it’s bad stuff. It will kill a generation of Micmac if we don’t put a stop to it. It is easy to become addicted. You might have heard of it—crank?”

“Oh,” Alex said, stunned by this revelation. Stunned that he had no idea that Markus had been gallantly fighting this on a reserve ten miles away.

“When they saw him at Poppy’s he tried to scramble out the back way into the woods with some things in his arms. To sell. So Johnny Proud’s now the most notable suspect—and my people think he was in your uncle’s house as well! By my people I don’t mean First Nations—I mean cops.” He smiled a little self-consciously here. Then he continued: “He has tried in his life to do good, but he hasn’t had much of a chance—not that I’m saying that because he is First Nation—but you see others will think I am doing so, won’t they—they say the case is solved QED. So they want me to let other things go, like the tire tracks and such.”

It took a moment for Alex to digest this. They simply stared at one another for that moment, and Alex felt terrified.

“But you are skeptical?” Alex asked finally, his throat dry.

“Yes. I don’t think he had anything to do with Poppy Bourque. I mean, I don’t think he was the one who had anything to do with the disappearance. But it will be in the paper after a while.”

“Well why did you say he did it? QED?” Alex asked.

“Oh, it’s simply because others do—that’s what others think—and they want me to approach it all as if the case is solved. My colleagues. You might have run into colleagues in your life—well, you are famous around here, I remember hearing about you as a boy, so you would know—who think the way they have been informed to think.” He paused, looked into his pocket for something and continued while looking through a notebook with an eagle head on its front. “And in fact as long as they live will not be able to think any other way.” Here he flipped some pages that seemed greasy and smudged. “They do not mean to rest and loiter in the world as hinderers, but they are hinderers. So I have these colleagues who believe the case is solved. But I am sure the case isn’t solved.”

“Why?”

“Well, I think—here—your uncle has a Ford—with standard half-ton box and tires—”

“Well, what do you want me to do? I mean—well, what I mean is why are you here at nine in the morning?”

It was a good question to ask and it caught Markus for a bit. He paused, looked at his watch.

“Oh, it is early, isn’t it? Anyway, I want you to understand everything will be in confidence. You were the one who organized the First Nations takeover of Chapman’s Island, so they could run their nets up along the bar. You were the one who went to the press, stood for your picture with First Nations men and women, so it would be put in
The Globe and Mail.
” Here he smiled again a little bit. “So I thought I’d come to see you—for, well, ethical support—support from you, in a way—so I wouldn’t have to charge Proud. I mean, if you spoke out it might allow a little time to continue looking in another direction. You are a voice for natives here, even if you are not one yourself!”

Alex had not forgotten that incident that had happened well over fifteen years ago. But now he said, “Oh—well—that was long ago—and—”

Markus put his notepad away.

“What do you think of Johnny Proud?”

“I don’t know Johnny Proud.”

“Ah—well, anyway, someday you might remember him.”

“How could I remember him?”

“Someday you may. He’s a real good candidate to do something like this—and we found a few things on him.”

“I don’t know what it is you are trying to say,” Alex answered. He was suspicious now, and felt the back of his neck pain. His heart, too, became rapid, and he could feel the valve as it seemed to constrict his breath. “I can’t stop the investigation!”

“Well, as you know, it is easy to blame an Indian, isn’t it?” Markus whispered. “I mean—I think someone told him these places were empty—and he needed money—then, well, after a while all the signs point to him. People simply forget the truck on the highway, forget how quickly Old Poppy left his house, forget that your uncle’s house is so far away from the reserve Johnny would have had to hitchhike or walk—and in his state how could he? That is, I don’t think the two break-ins are at all related. But you see he is First Nations, and so everyone thinks it’s him, and he has had a bad life—his mother was murdered in front of him. But an Indian is an Indian.” He said this almost as bait, and waited.

“I’m not sure if that’s always so,” Alex said, taking the opposite side of the issue for perhaps the first time and forgetting instantly his hero, the Vancouver sound poet who chanted Indian chants. “I believe there are a lot of people who no longer think that way—I certainly don’t!”

Markus reflected upon this outburst, and was silent.

Then he nodded.

“Yes, that’s the strange thing about ethics—it changes and yet it doesn’t change at all. The world is a full canvas, isn’t it—contradictions abound, no one knows exactly where anyone stands anymore—but I came on the quiet to see you. I mean, you’d give us a break, if you could!”

“What does that mean? ‘On the quiet’?”

“Simply this: I think someone else is involved in Poppy’s disappearance. Now I may be the only one to think this, and I may be in a bind. In fact, as the only First Nations member of the department I am sure I am in a bind—for me to come out and defend Johnny Proud, my first cousin—you see. You see, I know how ethics work—I know that a First Nations man got away with murder last year, because he was a First Nations man who killed another First Nations man. But now Johnny Proud comes along—a First Nations man who is suspected of having something to do with the disappearance of poor old Poppy Bourque. Someone will want to make up for last year, do you understand? So I am in a bind. My colleagues certainly do think he did it, and I am in the same department of law enforcement they are in—it is like a fraternity—so I have to bide my time. The pressure is to go along with them. Go along to get along. But you have always defended the underdog. So here I am, wondering if you think I am being too—well, unrealistic—and perhaps, well, you might write a column defending Proud—if you felt he was being set up.”

He smiled at this, a little sheepishly, and said nothing.

Alex tried to respond philosophically. “But—I am just saying, if you caught him—”

Markus paused again, and kept his eyes on Alex. Then he shrugged.

“We caught him coming away from a house that was empty—and so some think he was in your uncle’s house when it was empty—but does that mean he was there? I don’t think so. What I want to know is, was anyone else in those houses before John Proud was? And could it have been the same two people in both of those houses before John Proud came onto the scene half out of his mind on methamphetamine?”

Here Markus looked straight at Alex, and waited almost without breathing for a reply.

“I didn’t know anyone was in my uncle’s house—when did you find that out?”

“Oh—some little while ago.”

“Well how would I know? I can’t write a positive thing about John Proud if I don’t know—you know that!”

“Of course I do. You would have no way of knowing,” Markus said not as a question but as an affirmation.

“Of course not,” Alex laughed, “why would I? So I can’t really do it—I mean, I would like to write about Proud as a fine man—but I don’t know, do I? I mean, say if he isn’t a fine man and I go around calling him a fine man when he isn’t—well I shan’t do that, shall I!”

There was a pause—just a slight one. Markus put his hand on the table and, trembling just slightly, picked up the salt shaker and tapped it twice, as if to calm himself. Then putting it down he looked at Alex again, and said, “You wouldn’t allow anyone to ever get into trouble on your behalf?”

Alex’s entire face seemed to freeze in still frame for twenty seconds or more.