The Railroad (39 page)

I looked around suddenly for Benoit or someone like him, but there was no one to fit his description. Then I realized that Benoit was dead and that my mind was drifting again.

It was another few seconds before I decided she wasn’t there to kill me. “Uh, I know. Thanks.”

The look of concern stayed on her face. “You think you might want some coffee?” she asked, putting her pocketbook on the bar.

“No. I’m just tired. I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.”

“You sound like you’re from south of here.”

For some reason that made me laugh. “Uh, most of the country is from south of here.”

She smiled sadly. “I see what you mean.” She stared at me. “Do you know that you’re crying?”

I put my hands to my face. “Oh, I didn’t know.”

She sat down at the bar and signaled to the bartender. “Karen! I’ll have a Rolling Rock.”

Karen hadn’t noticed her until that moment. When she saw both of us sitting together, her jaw set. Then she set about pulling out a Rolling Rock and popping the top, all the while glancing at me and my new companion. When she came down the bar she placed the beer on the surface somewhat theatrically and made a point of standing there for a moment before she spoke.

“You made a friend, Bailey?”

Bailey gave her an odd look. “Just someone who needs a friend. And maybe some coffee.” She stared at me meaningfully.

I looked back at her, there was no guile in her eyes. She seemed sincere. “Well, I guess I’ll be here for a while. I might as well sober up.”

Karen gave me a not so friendly smile and moved back up the bar to get a cup of coffee for me.

I giggled. “She doesn’t like me,” I told Bailey.

“Don’t worry about her. This is a small town. They don’t like anyone.”

“Then why are you talking to me?”

“I’m not from here—Massachusetts actually.”

I nodded and stared at the lights over the bar. Bailey wasn’t going to let me drift away, it seemed. “So what brings you up here?” she asked.

I smiled, knowing, even in my haze, that she was being motherly and trying to help. “I’m trying to help someone. And I can’t.” I shook my head as it hung.

She put her hand on my shoulder. “That’s okay. At least you’re trying.”

I shook my head again. “No, I’m not. I can’t find them.”

“Where are they?”

I felt a cold stab of suspicion—why was she asking me these questions. “Why do you want to know?”

I looked up and saw fear on her face; I had scared her. “I’m just trying to help you,” she said.

“Noah’s
Ark
,” I said, my words slurring.

“What?”

“There’s a barn. That’s where they are. At least that’s what they told me. Maybe everyone’s lying to me, even the people I’m looking for.”

“Karen! Where’s that coffee?”

“In a second.”

The next hour or so was a blur. I remember coffee. I figure I must have had at last three cups—it started to sour my stomach. There came a point where I was tired but not quite so drunk anymore.

“Are you feeling better?” I heard Bailey ask.

I looked up at her. The bar came into clearer focus. I blinked my eyes. There was a man standing next to me. “Time to go,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Let him sit for a while longer, Tim.”

“He needs to go." He leaned over me.

“Who’re you?” I asked him.

“The manager. You need to go.”

“Can you drive?” Bailey asked me.

“I think so.”

“Okay,” Tim growled. “Time to go.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked. I started to giggle. My hand flew out and knocked over the remains of my drink.

Tim put his hand under my arm. “Okay. That’s it!”

Bailey put herself between him and me. “Let me walk him to his car. You don’t need to treat him like this!”

“Fuck off, Bailey. This isn’t your business.”

“And why the hell is it yours?”

Karen came into view. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, Bailey. He has to go.”

“You’re full of shit, you know that?” Bailey shouted.

As Tim reached for my arm again, Bailey knocked him out of the way. “Okay! He’s going. I’ll take him to his car.” She began to help me up.

“See that he’s gone,” Tim said.

I’d managed to stand up, with Bailey’s help. I found that I felt marginally better. Maybe the booze had let me relax for the first time in days. I decided that I deserved some sleep.

Bailey and I shuffled out of the bar and into the parking lot. She helped me fish out my keys and opened the door for me. As I moved into the front seat, she grabbed my hand. “Are you sure that you can drive?"

“I think I’m okay now. I can make it to the motel.”

“Where are you staying?”

I had to think for a second. “D-Ron?”

“Ugh! That’s a shit hole.”

“That’s the place.”

“Do you want some more coffee before you go?”

“No. I think I’ve had enough.”

She stared at me, studying my face. “Okay,” she finally said.

I nodded at her. “Thanks.”

“By the way,” she said.

“What?”

“You mentioned a barn before. Were you serious or was that just the booze talking.”

I didn’t remember saying anything about a barn. “What did I say?”

“You said something about a barn and
Noah’s
Ark
.”

I became more alert. “I did?”

“Yeah. Because…well it seems like a coincidence if you were just babbling. But there’s a barn near here in the shape of
Noah’s
Ark
. I thought that might help if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s in Gaston. About an hour north of here.”

A voice exploded in my head telling me to go to Gaston right away. It made sense; Gaston was the last town on my postcard list. Then I forced myself to take stock of my mental state and I wasn’t pleased; things seemed far away and sounds created a dull echo. I needed to sleep more than anything.

But there was a small voice that told me that there was no time to lose, that I’d found Eileen and Megan and any time I lost might be disastrous. The coffee had made things worse, in a way. While I was wired and a little more aware of my surroundings, I felt stretched and pulled tight. It was a dangerous frame of mind and I wasn’t sure what state I’d be in within two or three hours

I ended up compromising with myself. I planned to spend a few hours sleeping and then get up and go straight to Gaston. As I pulled into the D-Ron’s parking lot, part of me knew I could make no guarantees about how long I’d sleep once my head hit the pillow.

*

When I did wake up, I’d only slept about two hours and I found that, despite my horrible exhaustion, I couldn’t really sleep anymore. As hard as I tried, each time I closed my eyes, my mind would race with incoherent thoughts and I’d jerk awake. Finally, I gave up and decided to meet whatever fate there was for me in Gaston. In the end, something told me that my clumsy attempt at getting information in Piedmont might become news in Gaston within a couple of hours. The more quickly I moved the better.

I had wondered if Gaston was a French name as I searched for it on the map. During the hour drive there I became certain it was—most of the towns and most of the names I saw on signs seemed to be a remnant of some Quebecois immigration from the past. Gaston itself wasn’t much to look at. There was a post office, a fire station, a store of sorts, a restaurant, and a bar. It was clear that only the bar would be open at that time of night.

The Pea
Soup was in an odd building for a bar. It looked more like a Victorian house in San Francisco than a drinking establishment on the northern fringe of New England. The inside turned out to be a regulation dive. About fifteen locals sat at the bar and a few more at tables. It was obvious from the first impression that this was purely a townie bar. Not a great place to ask questions.

The reaction was immediately hostile as soon as I walked through the door. Several heads turned and faces told what the patrons didn’t want to say aloud:
You’re not from around here
. I tried to act as casual as possible.

It took a good five minutes for the bartender to get to me once I’d sat down at the bar, despite how little business there was. “What’ll you have?” he asked coldly, slapping a coaster down in front of me.

“Bourbon,” I told him. It was the first thing that came to my mind.

He looked at me strangely and smirked. I heard a few chortles from down the bar. I noticed that everyone else was drinking beer. I’d struck out already.

The bartender brought me my drink and placed it before me. “You want to run a tab?”

“Sure,” I answered. At least it would make me seem less of an asshole if I wasn’t paying for my drinks one at a time, like I was ready to run out at any moment.

I decided to wait. If I asked him anything right away it would make me seem too anxious. If I was just drinking like the rest of them, they might start to get used to me. I nursed my first drink for a while, not wanting to repeat my performance back in Piedmont. After about 45 minutes I ordered another drink. The bartender placed it in front of me gingerly, like he was near to the source of some deadly infection.

“Excuse me,” I said as he moved away.

“What?” he asked warily.

“I was just wondering. I’m a photographer and I’m doing a book on New England architecture. I heard something about a barn shaped like
Noah’s
Ark
. Is that for real or just a legend?”

He stiffened a bit and I heard a couple of chairs squeak across the floor as they were turned. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, I don’t know much about it but someone down in Piedmont told me about it.”

The temperature seemed to be going up quickly in the Pea Soup. I could feel eyes on me and conversation seemed to have stopped completely. “I guess you should go back to Piedmont then and ask." someone said.

I turned and looked at the speaker. He stared back at me, a regulation red hunter’s cap on his head. Turning my head made me feel dizzy and I was finding it hard to completely understand the meaning of what he said. He looked away after a few seconds. I saw the bartender out of the corner of my eye, making a phone call and casting glances my way every few seconds. I wondered if he was talking to someone in Piedmont, maybe Tim. And maybe I was just being uncontrollably paranoid.

I downed the rest of my drink, wondering what to do. After about fifteen minutes I found myself returning to the state I’d been in back in Piedmont: incredibly tired and disoriented. I put my head down on the bar and tried to gather my wits.

The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake. I jerked my head up in time to see the bartender giving me the evil eye. “We don’t like people sleeping in here, mister. If you’ve had too much, you have to leave.”

In my haze it seemed like he was speaking to someone else and it took me a while before I could digest what he’d said and make some sense of it. I considered my options; I wasn’t even sure that if I left, I’d be able to make it back to the D-Ron; I wasn't exactly sure where it was. Then I remembered why I came and I began to tear up. It wasn’t even that I felt sad at that point; what I felt was a kind of dreamlike state where every stray feeling I had took on greater meaning—the meaning of a dream.

The bartender looked like he was a little afraid of me. “I’m fine,” I told him and ordered another drink. He stared at me for a moment then shrugged. “Your funeral.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked him. I must have looked crazy; he said nothing and walked off to get my drink. When he brought it back, I decided that my wired state of mind could only be improved by more alcohol. I downed it in one gulp.

I sat there as I let the next installment of alcohol hit me. Rather than calming me, it made me feel even more detached and more drugged—it was almost like the absinthe high I’d experienced years before at a friend’s house. Things seemed to pulse with an inner light.

I stared at my hand like it was some reference point to some place I’d once been but could barely remember. I could see the bartender eyeing me from down the bar. I nodded at him; it seemed like there was some unspoken communication between us. He stared at me strangely.

I sat there drifting, listening to the jukebox and watching my thoughts as my mind wandered. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 12:30. Once in a while I remembered that I’d have to drive back to my room at the D-Ron and I dreaded it. Then my mind drifted off again.

I decided that it was time to go to the bathroom. I stumbled off my stool and walked back toward the front door where the bathrooms were. I felt people’s eyes around me, most notably the man in the hunter’s cap who’d spoken to me before, telling me to go back to Piedmont. As I passed him our eyes locked. Then I turned away. Immediately, I heard the name Megan spoken.