The Lost Highway (50 page)

“We won’t.”

“We cannot do it without her fearing!”

This now is what the argument had degenerated into: a debate on what would make the child frightened.

“I cannot take time out from killing her to convince you that she won’t be scared!” Bourque said.

So all the time Amy was wrestling with Fanny, all the time Fanny was complaining about bumps on her tongue, Alex was in a life-and-death struggle with his alter ego, Leo Bourque, and they were getting further and further away from each other. Because Alex was in the end, by his own impartial and somewhat brilliant logic, denying there was any way to kill her, if she was going to be afraid.

“We have to break the door down, and we have to get her now. You don’t know what will happen—you don’t know!” Bourque said, starting to panic. “They will kill us in jail—neither of us will see Christmas, you think they will welcome us in jail. We’re dead as soon as we go to Renous or Dorchester, if it doesn’t come off right! You talk about being frightened—you want frightened, know that you’re going to get a shiv in jail!”

Both of them were sweating uncontrollably. Uncontrollably it clung to their backs and faces and chests, and uncontrollably Bourque was deciding that he must act alone if this man was not going to. They would have to separate at the moment when one needed the other most.

“I can’t kill her if she is going to be afraid,” Alex said, shivering now and indecisive, as he often was at moments when the opposite quality was required.

“She won’t be—I promise.”

“But she is now!” Alex yelled.

Alex looked at his shadow across the ground, stretching now because of the moon all the way to where Bourque had piled his huge pile of fagots, and shivered. He was just off the lane, and just where he once walked up to see Minnie, and just where he had turned down to Jameson’s landing to meet her, and just where Harold Tucker had stopped him. He was in fact where he had been all of his life, and had not moved, and now could not. What is lamentable, he realized that almost every moment of his life had simply played out in his brain.

He turned and saw Bourque, then looked up at the sky. How turbulent it was, and how great in its turbulence. And he remembered one of Keats’ lesser sonnets.

I love to mark sad faces in fair weather

And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder!

It was what he used to sing when he tramped through a storm alone, for he was our Alex Chapman, always alone.

But he did not know he had spoken those lines, until Bourque looked at him and said, “You will have all the money to do all of that.”

“What Keats is saying is you don’t need money to do all of that—he himself died broke, in fact gave his money away. He was at one time one of my great heroes—I must go back to him!”

“Where is he?”

Alex did not answer.

“Well, you can give your money away too,” Bourque said. “I myself am not going to stop you. I still, however, am going to get my Porsche—drive it up to Cid Fouy’s office just to see the look on his face.”

They had moved out now, out into the lane, backing away from the house, because of the sudden feeling Alex had that this was useless and his life was over. He would not go to jail tonight. He decided he would die before he did.

Once that thought came it did not diminish, but in fact clarified all other thoughts. He had been thinking this, in fact, most of the day, from the moment Bourque had told him about the clothesline. There in that instant did he realize that nothing about this protected him from the onslaught that would sooner or later come. But there was also this—and it meant his end, if he said it. He knew this now, as one of the great moments in his life. He knew and thanked God he knew it!

“I cannot kill a child—and Bourque, you probably can’t either.”

He first told himself this while the truck was blazing in the half-moribund yard, with the leftover rebar from the bridge sitting like Picasso’s wild stickmen on skinny horses. I cannot kill a child, he had told himself, when he had reasoned that not to do so would expose the very foundation of his theories on goodness and drench him in contempt. So he had buoyed himself to do it and made his way to Fanny’s house, its very essence crying out for justice for an old woman and a young girl who had saved up money to put snaps on her jeans, so she would look like other kids who had ten times the money. And he knew this. And was ashamed. Still he said it had to be done, and they had gone to the door. And he had heard the old lady peeing, and Amy wiping her and getting her up, and again the horrible shame had come over him.

The shame had been growing, and he had tried to swallow it until Bourque started to pile the bushes up.

Now he had backed this man out into the road where he had played as a child, where he had hoped for kindness from others, and much kindness he had never received. Where he had asked for his mother’s forgiveness, where he had prayed for Minnie’s love, where he had studied the stars with as wise an eye as anyone, and for the priesthood with some humility, where he spoke about terns and gulls and sandpipers to the sweet summer air, and sank his feet into the muck, where his best dreams were never realized, yet this road still was; he knew, now and forever, that he could not do it. He could not. Yet, he had tried to do it once, and believed in its wisdom.

As moonlight shone on the old drenched shed, he saw the faded words Minnie had written to him years and years ago: “Don’t you know how I feel, look the writing is on the wall!”

“If I do this I am damned,” Alex said.

“Shut up,” Bourque said, accusingly, “You are talking just like Poppy! I won’t take it—don’t talk like Poppy or we won’t get our money!”

Alex was silent, tottering on the ledge he had made for himself so long ago, the ledge he could climb to and hide on, the ledge that was crumbling.

“I can’t,” he said finally, “I can’t.”

There was a silence. Far away they heard a coydog yap; the moon was now out.

“I will die tonight and so will you,” Alex said, for the first time realizing that the position he was in had allowed him this desire to “be half in love with easeful death.”

“Do it and we will be free—you and Minnie will be one again!”

“I can’t,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets as if being stubborn. “Please, just let’s go—who knows yet what good might happen!”

He tried to grab Bourque’s arm, but Leo shrugged and stepped sideways. A chill came up from the ground, and the coydog became loud again.

Then Bourque turned away, and looked into the trees, as if turning his back on a former colleague forever. There were tears in his eyes. He was thinking of Doreen and how close he might have been to winning her approval just once more. He too knew that if this did not happen he would have to die, as going to jail was impossible for him.

When Bourque turned back, Alex had disappeared. He was absolutely furious at this betrayal, right at the moment. And just then, at that time, he saw a glittery form drop from the sky, land, and run, glittering under the moon. It was Amy, trying to make it back to her house, to phone the police. If he had not piled the fagots up just where he had, she would have broken her leg, but they in turn had broken her fall, like a springboard, and she ran, glittering as someone said, “all over her legs and arse up over the Lean-to hill!”

“How dare you?” Bourque whispered, and took off after her, hobbling because of his bad hip but knowing he had to hurry if he was to cut her off by Vince’s rock.

If you run from someone, they almost always assume that you are guilty.

—

A
MY HAD LEFT
F
ANNY WHERE SHE WAS, JUMPED TO RUN
around the shed, which allowed Leo to run diagonally toward her, passing by the far side of the house. But she was gone into the field, and only the sparkles on her pants kept her in view. He ran after her knowing what she knew—she would have to turn through the trees, toward the path, and get into her house to call 911.

Both understood this, and both were acting upon this insight. So just at the end of the diminutive crooked field, where an old deer trail was, and where laying deer had bent the yellow grasses, she turned into the woods, crashing the limbs before her in the dark. Then there was silence.

He walked off the cut and waited, in among some trees that had been scarred and brought leafless by blight. He heard Arron Brook moving down toward Glidden’s pool. Certainly she could not cross Arron, she would drown, so since she was now between him and the furious heavy brook she would move north toward her house, which would bring her along the old apple orchard and the burned house of the unhappy Roaches, the family who had tried to destroy Chapman, and who had brought to life Charlie Roach, who had succeeded in establishing a son who seemed to have finally done the job. There were tiny foundation stones there in the moonlight, like some gothic picture, so wild and beautiful amid the curling fog. But she wouldn’t be able to disappear so easily among them, as she was now in the deep undergrowth. So he waited for her to come out. Like one who knew how to hunt would wait on a deer.

The moonlight was eerie, and shadows had formed, and along the wall of stone turning into autumnal ashes—where there was once, if not laughter, at least a kitchen, and a pantry—was a ground fog that seemed to sweep over them. He looked up at the moon, close in its distant orbit about us. So he took to moving along the fringe of the derelict Roach property.

He picked up a stick and kept banging it against the trees in front of him, in part to find his way, and in part to scare his prey. He did not speak. She did not speak. At points, without knowing it, but which could be known by an owl watching, he was some fifteen feet from her, but she had tucked herself down under some plants and was almost lifeless. When he moved away, she took off her pants and sneakers and lay them across a branch. Then she slipped toward Arron Brook, and walked carefully along the bank.

He had lost her, he thought, as he walked back toward where he had come from. He stood silent once again, as if stand hunting for deer. Then he trashed ahead and behind him with the stick. He worked this way once again until he got to the remains of the small house, the stones crumbled with age and forgotten by men who would soon enough join them, and made his way toward the Roach orchard, the only thing they had managed in fifty-five years here.

Just then he turned. At the far end of this place, lingering in the stubble of alders and grasses where he had just come from, he saw something sparkle. He moved toward Arron Brook—that is, to his right—and missed running into her by ten seconds. He swept around on the fringe of the Roach property, toward what he assumed was behind where she was. As soon as he got fifteen feet from her, he rushed ahead, and slashed at her with the stick. To his incredulity he swished at nothing but a pair of jeans with glitter snaps, and a pair of sneakers with reflectors. The jeans flew a few feet and landed on a branch, and Bourque, still stultified, looked about for her, to see if she was under them.

He heard her crashing away to the north again, beyond Roaches’ and the apple orchard.

He realized that she was on the far side of her house, and in fact he was closer to it. The moon was now high over the darkness of our land. Far away there was the sound of a truck on the highway, the pastures were wet and sullen, the water of Bartibog glistened in the night.

Her room was the same as she had left it that day. She had her CDs in a box near her small guitar, and her book of Aristotle’s ethics—the same edition of the book Alex had sought a few days ago. Strangely, it was face up on the bed, turned to page 124. It was as she had left it. And Bourque waited under the porch, but she did not come.

He waited ten minutes, but she did not come. But she knew where he was. That is, on the very far side of the Patch ground, near the small fence and birdhouse, she was waiting to see if the house was safe. He realized after a while that this was perhaps the only place she could be; for to her right was the bog, and to her left was back where she came from.

He turned and went silently across the old Jameson tote road, and came up behind her.

He could see her pathetically shivering and looking toward the house. She had seen the skunk hobble off the porch as she got there, and realized someone had spooked it. So, knowing this, she had waited.

She was marblelike in the night air, her teeth chattering, wearing only her pink underwear and a T-shirt that said
HILLBILLY HEAVEN
!

“How are you?” he asked.

—

S
HE WAS BEING LED BY THE ARM, AS IF BY A VICE GRIP
, straight through the dark woods, in her pink panties that were soaking wet, so she appeared completely naked from the waist down.

He did not speak, and she did not speak. Until they came to the path toward Glidden’s pool she made no sound. Then she realized what he was going to do, and started to fight him, kicking and trying to bite.

“You come along now, missy—you just come along now,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”

He did not know what he was saying or why he was saying it, but she fought each foot of the way, both of her feet bleeding, her wrists swollen from him holding them. He wanted to cover her up but did not.

“If you come with me, if you do, nothing whatsoever, whatsoever will happen to you,” he implored. “Scout’s honor. Nothing.”

—

T
HEY WERE SILENT AT THE SMALL TABLE IN THE LITTLE
kitchen. Both Minnie and Sam had their heads down, and Markus had put his notebook away, and the flies still wobbled in the heat. The door was open to a smell of sweet air, being more clear and brisk than the stale summer heat, the air that was now coming down from the north to clean all things away. On better days, both Markus and Sam would have thought of moose hunting or partridge hunting soon to come, of the ducks and geese that would cross the marshes in the hundreds, of the nights to come when buck would move throughout the backyards scenting on doe. But neither of them thought this now.