The Railroad (38 page)

I found myself a cabin at the edge of a cheap motel complex; it was all they had available. I was right near the road which I could see vaguely through the few trees that bordered it. As useless as it was, I still went through my ritual of placing improvised burglar alarms in front of the door and windows of my room. Then I laid back on the bed and fell asleep.

*

I awoke suddenly feeling something was wrong. I lay still for a minute or so, trying to get the feel of the room I was in before I came up against the certainty that someone was there with me. I sat up and saw a vague form outlined against the window. My hand went toward the lamp on the flimsy night table, but then I thought better of it.

“You won’t make it to me with that lamp before I can knock you down.”

I grunted and stared at the ceiling.

“I think you need some advice.”

I digested the words. In the silence that followed I heard the hiss of the occasional car on the road. I wondered if I should simply roll off the bed and provide a more difficult target. “Why did you kill Benoit?” I asked experimentally. Maybe I could shock him into revealing something.

“That’s not the issue right now. The issue is that you need to turn back. You won’t like the outcome if you keep on going the way you’re going.”

“Meaning, you are threatening me.”

I heard a sigh. “Go back to New York. You can’t help anyone.”

I became angry. “There are people I
have
to help because of people like you.”

“You’re an asshole! Go home.”

“Why are you so afraid of me?”

“Go back. That’s all I have to say. There’s nothing you can do here. You’ll regret it if you keep going.”

“Fuck you.”

I saw a flash of a hooded sweatshirt as the door opened and closed. I lay there and thought about what had happened. A murderer would have killed me, but for some reason this person was afraid of me.

So, all I could conclude was that, for some reason, someone didn’t want me dead just at that moment.

*

I didn’t get more than a couple of hours of sleep that night. Somewhere in the night I’d come to a conclusion.

Years before I had owned a gun. I had gone through the training, spent some time at the shooting range, and become a passable shot. But something had always made me uneasy about it. I found that as time went by, I stopped cleaning the gun and eventually stopped my visits to the range.

I had heard all the arguments. Having a gun makes things worse. You have to be ready to use it or someone will turn it against you. I’d had conversations about this with any number of people at bars. It was always a hot button and I’d never decided whether I wanted a gun in my house or not.

It was half fear and half being sleep deprived. But I decided that I was tired of being a sitting duck. If they were going to threaten me, they were going to pay for it.

I knew enough about rural areas to know that getting a gun wouldn’t be such a big deal, though it might attract some attention. Against my better judgment, I knew I was near the end of my quest. I wasn’t sure I cared about an illegal gun possession charge once the whole thing was done.

I pulled out the yellow pages the motel had so obligingly left for me, and found the firearms section. From what I could see, if I backtracked ten miles on the road I’d driven in on, I would find Dave’s Sporting Goods. I’d obviously passed it the evening before. On the way I stopped at the one teller machines in town; I figured cash would be an incentive to sell.

Dave eyed me suspiciously as I walked in; I guessed he was used to seeing people he knew. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like a pistol. I’m up in the area for a little while for vacation and I left my target practice gun at home. I hope you can help me.”

“I have the best collection of pistols in this area. But there are restrictions. A background check, you know.”

I still didn’t know much about guns but I picked out what seemed the best for me: a thirty-eight; I’d seen enough of them carried by police in New York back before they issued better weapons. It would fit in my jacket and wouldn’t be too hard to lift.

This particular model had mother of pearl inlays and an intricate pistol grip. There was a holster, a gun sight, a cleaning kit and a velvet lined case. I’d picked it because it probably was expensive and I figured that was my ace in the hole with Dave.

“How about that one,” I asked, pointing.

His eyes lit up. He tried to hide his enthusiasm by taking a casual drag on his cigarette. “That’s an excellent piece.” He began rattling off statistics: this type of metal, that type of metal treatment, this type of balance, that type of baffling around the chamber. I understood none of it.

“I’m interested. But how long does the background check take?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, looking me in the eye. “That’s not a gun for amateurs, mister. That’s a $650 weapon.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m only going to be here for a couple of weeks. I can’t wait for a background check. And when I leave, I can get a permit back home. The gun’ll go with me.”

“Well we need to follow regulations. I can see that you’re just a weekend shooter. So, if you promise not to load it outside of a shooting range, I guess I can sell it to you."

“Of course! I was going to ask you where the nearest shooting range was. If I could go there today, I’d be happy.”

“You from the city?”

“Boston,” I lied.

“Thought so. Well I know you have to defend yourself in the big city. This is a good gun for that. Why don’t we make it an even six if you have the cash?”

“I can do that. And why don’t you give me some ammunition?”

“No problem.”

We shook hands after the sale. “Good hunting,” he told me as I left his shop.

As I drove off, it
occurred
to me that the gun might have cost a good hundred less than he charged me.

Chapter Nineteen

I was armed and now I had an illegal gun. That wouldn’t be really wonderful if I was stopped and searched. Somehow, I felt I needed a gun, that all the crap I’d been through for the past six months had been leading me to this moment; me driving to what would probably be the last town on my journey, armed and stupid. Sort of like some lonely kid robbing his first bank a century ago.

I was pretty close to the Canadian border; I could see more and more French names on businesses and mailboxes, some of them Anglicized. I began imagining myself going up into Quebec and losing myself there for a while. It seemed that all this chasing around was going to lead me nowhere and I wasn’t about to go straight back to New York with my tail between my legs. I could see myself living in some little lake town at the foot of the Laurentians, sipping wine and being like someone out of a bad novel from the sixties.

I came back to reality with a start. I’d been driving, flawlessly, but I’d been somewhere else; nothing I’d been thinking made any sense. I looked behind me to make sure there was no one coming and I slowed and pulled off on the shoulder. I opened the window and got the blast of cool air I was looking for. It didn’t do much to clarify my thought processes, but it did make me feel a little more comfortable.

I tried to muster my thoughts in a vain attempt to figure out what was happening to me. I’d heard all kinds of stories about fugue states where people drifted into some altered reality and functioned fully for days at a time. They were due to things like trauma or excessive drinking. Lack of sleep and stress seemed good candidates to bring one on. I could go on and enter a dream world and…

I stared out the windshield and felt my thoughts bounce around my head helplessly before I moved on.

I stopped for something to eat around eleven. As I walked into the small deli I started to slip again. For a moment I was walking through the end of an action movie and I was the star. The people I passed seemed to sense              my tragic hero status and part before me. I would look someone in the eye and there would be an immediate understanding of

who I was and what I was doing. The counterman who took my order seemed particularly cowed by me as I ordered a ham and egg sandwich. Things seemed to go in slow motion: the movement of the clock, the counterman’s hands putting together my sandwich.

I shook my head to clear it. The counterman stared at me; he looked like an ordinary person again and I knew that I’d never been Clint Eastwood, though my rough appearance might have scared the shit out of him. I vowed that I wouldn’t let my mind wander into fantasy again.

Piedmont was a surprisingly pleasant town in the middle of general barrenness. It had more of a Green Mountain feel to it than any of the other Maine towns I’d passed through. There was even a town square with a gazebo to lend the town an air of calm laziness. I watched as a couple ate candy bars, presumably on a break from work.

I was exhausted and had pushed myself to get to Piedmont by three. Now I wanted nothing but to get some sleep. I figured on a few hours before I started exploring the town. Anything that wasn’t open that night, I’d hit tomorrow.

I found the Bulwark Arms with no trouble. It was a little Victorian confection right off the town square. I could see that, rather than being the usual yuppie run bed and breakfast, it was a hotel that probably dated from the late 1800’s.

The lobby was pretty empty and the desk manager greeted me with a smile that made me wonder if anyone ever stayed there. “Nice to see you,” he said. I was glad to hear his accent; here was one person that belonged in Maine.

“How are you doing?” I countered, trying my best to take the New York out of my accent. “Seems pretty quiet here. Is it always like this?”

“You’ve hit the end of the slow season. It should pick up in the next couple of weeks. We have the lake, and people want it to be warm when they swim. It stays cold up here for a while.”

“I can see that. Well, quiet is fine with me.”

He stared at me. “You okay?”

“Not much sleep and a lot of driving.” I smiled in what I hoped would be a reassuring way.

He nodded, clearly not convinced. “How many nights?”

I took a second to get my bearings and try to clear my head. I had my stories down. All I had to do was repeat them. I took a deep breath, something I hoped he’d see as indecisiveness and not dishonesty. “Hmm...It depends on if I can find my sister. This is one of the places I told her to try to find me right about now. We’re supposed to meet up, but well, she’s never been good about planning. I guess I’ll give it a couple of nights. If she isn’t here...” I shrugged my shoulders.

He looked dubious. “You’re supposed to meet your sister but you don’t know where she is?”

“You’d have to have met her, and her daughter. I think they might have stayed here. If they did then I have a better reason to stay here because it means they’re somewhere around here. My next try is in Canada. She likes games. Like hide and go seek.”

I realized immediately that it all sounded incredibly stupid. What was coming out of my mouth was more sleep deprivation than anything else. The desk manager simply stared at me suspiciously. “I don’t remember anyone who sounds like that. Maybe you need to move on to Canada. You could be waiting here for days.”

I thought I felt waves of fear coming off him and it scared me. “Well you could be right.” I had the picture in my pocket and wondered whether he was going to freak out if I showed it to him. Maybe he was one of them, whoever they were.

I figured I was in so deep, what the hell. “Well you can help me then. If you haven’t seen them, I probably will take your advice. I have a picture of them,” I set the picture on the counter with as much nonchalance as I could muster under the circumstances.

He looked at the picture, looked at me and I could almost see his face setting like concrete. “Don’t know them. Sorry.” He stared ahead, his eyes somewhere a foot above my head.

“Okay,” I said, trying to act like I was weighing my options. It seemed like there would be nothing but trouble if I stayed in the Bulwark Arms. And I clearly wasn’t going to get any information. “I guess I’ll go. Thanks for the help.”

I felt his eyes bore into my back as I left. It was a feeling I was getting used to on this trip.

I stood on the near empty street and watched the sun making its arc down to the horizon. What I needed more than anything else was sleep. I found that I couldn’t decide what to do next. Finally, in desperation, I asked someone on the street if there was a motel nearby. I was glad to hear that it was out of town; I wanted to get as far from the creepy Bulwark Arms as I could get.

The D-Ron motel was a generic shitbox. I figured the name must have been some creative combination of syllables from some important part of someone’s life. However, I was able to keep my curiosity in check as I took the keys to room 215. It was on the second floor, I was assured proudly by the owner, almost as if that implied that there’d be a really spectacular view.

As it turned out, there was, only it was of some wasted carnival rides that had obviously sat in the back of the D-Ron since the Watergate scandal. I regarded the tilt-a-whirl with grim satisfaction as I worked the door open. The room was a tribute to anonymity and then some. I locked the door, set up some of my clearly useless booby traps, put the gun on the bed next to my hand, and fell into a deep sleep.

*

It was dark when I woke up. The antique marvel by my bed, blared 8:17 at me in bright red numerals, each numeral was the size of a subway rat. I supposed that Ron or “D” had considered this boon of elephantine clockwork an act of generosity. I figured it must have cost at least an additional fifty cents over other mere clocks.

To my disappointment I didn’t feel that much better than when I’d gone to sleep. After walking around the room for a while I concluded that it might have been better if I hadn’t slept at all. My eyes felt gritty and I was irritable and had a hard time completing a thought. What was worse was that I felt like crying. I supposed it was a lot like the serious jet lag I’d experienced when I’d come home from Australia several years before. I could feel the tendrils of the dreams I’d had playing in my head, half-forgotten. It felt like I’d gone down into my subconscious and hadn’t quite come back out.

In the lurid red light of the “Accu-time” clock I felt like I was in a nightmare landscape. I sat back down on the bed and stared. It was another five minutes before I seemed to move without really wanting to; I had to get out of my room and keep moving or I might just collapse and never find Eileen and Megan.

I found myself standing out on the highway that had brought me to the D-Ron. I could see some of the lights of the town a mile or so away. There didn’t seem much of anywhere else to go. So I got in my car.

The Bulwark was clearly out, so I drove through the town twice before I decided on the Three Rivers Inn, a bar that seemed touristy enough that I could entertain a hope that I wouldn’t get the shit beat out of me. I sat down at the bar and immediately discarded the idea of ordering any single malt they might have, though I saw a couple. I didn’t need the attention. I ended up ordering a Jim Beam; it wasn’t exactly high profile liquor.

I scanned the bar and found only seven people there; none of them seemed like they’d be open to having a conversation with me. I realized that it could be a long night and, in my condition, I had better nurse my bourbon.

As it turned out, nursing wasn’t going to help; I was farther gone than I realized; after the second sip I entered a state that I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager and what I took to get high was far stronger. After an hour and a half went by, I was almost incapable of coherent thought. Somewhere along the line, depression set in. This was my last stop and I realized that, if this didn’t yield anything, it would all be over. I’d never really considered that completely; that I might have done all this for nothing. That I’d be driving back home, my enemies laughing at me. And I’d never see Eileen or Megan again.

I had one chance left and I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t waste it. I stared at the clock just to find some point of reference in the haze that I was floating in. I did what seemed like composing myself, but actually amounted to shaking my head back and forth. I decided I might as well talk to the bartender; she’d most likely seen and heard just about everything that had gone on in this small town. I raised my hand for another bourbon, simultaneously pulling the photo of Eileen and Megan out of my pocket.

The bartender was friendly as she took my drink order. Then her eyes became unfocused as she saw me put the photo on the bar. “My sister!” I shouted over the noise. “We were supposed to meet here tonight, but she…she never does what you expect her to do.” I smiled, knowing that I must have looked like shit. My own words echoed in my head as though I was hearing them through a wall; I shook my head once more to clear it.

She took one look at the photo and moved off down the bar to get me my drink. There was no nervousness in her movements and she didn’t seem interested in talking to me. She tried to turn away once she’d put my drink in front of me, and I found that it made me oddly angry. I stopped her by standing up and touching her arm. She whirled on me like I’d hit her.

I held up my hands. “Sorry,” I yelled. “I just wanted to know if you’d seen my sister and her daughter. If you have, I have reason to stay here. Otherwise…” I shrugged. I was getting tired of shrugging.

“I’ve never seen them,” she said with no expression and moved away. I got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach and I knew I didn’t believe her at all.

I sat there feeling defeated. I could go to everyone in the bar and show them the photo, but all I’d do is get people angry at me. My anger grew as I took a good pull at my drink. And as far as I could see, it was over. I had no business being in that bar, in Piedmont, or anywhere north of Westchester, for that matter. I finished the last of my drink and sat staring. Some proper part of me wondered if I looked homicidal and if I’d be thrown out of the dive. But mostly I didn’t care. I called for another drink—at least the bartender owed me that much.

Oddly, she brought it to me. I guessed that if I was completely shit-faced, I’d present less of a threat. My next sip hit me like a hammer when it got to my stomach. The stress and lack of sleep over the last few days rose to a crescendo—it was like I was seeing the world through the bottom of a glass.

I must have sat there staring moodily into the surface of the bar for a good hour before someone tapped my shoulder. I was still aware enough to become nervous—who knew who’d want to escort me out of the bar and threaten me still one more time. But what I saw wasn’t a bouncer or some surly male. It was a female who smiled benignly at me. I wondered for a moment if she was a distraction sent by
them
to befuddle me and throw me off the track. I stared at her stupidly, waiting for her to say something.

She looked a little puzzled. “I’m not trying to bother you. You look…well you look like you’re in trouble. Maybe you don’t need to be drinking anymore.”

I watched her awkwardly, trying to size her up;
the two people I’d met in this town hated me already so what were the odds that
she wasn’t one of my enemies, whoever they were.