The Terror of Living (35 page)

    "You're probably thinking of my father," Drake said.

    "You were the one who shot that psycho a year back?" the sheriff asked. "Heard you took something like five bullets." The sheriff was smiling. He was a big man with a nice overhanging gut that Drake didn't think would do him any good if he had to run anyone down.

    "Just two," Drake said.

    "Goddamn!"

    "Just lucky, I guess."

    "Yeah, well… it's two more than I'd like to take."

    They came to a stop in front of the little ten-by-ten cell with the woman in it. Drake looked through the bars to where she sat on a small bench. "What did you say her name was?"

    "Joan Thomas," the sheriff said.

    "She got any type of ID?"

    "Just a few twenty-dollar bills on her, a grocery card, and a movie-rental punch card for the convenience store we got here in town."

    "What do those say her name is?"

    "Joan Thomas."

    Drake looked in on the woman. She didn't look up at either of them, kept her face to the floor. "Hey," Drake said through the bars. "What's your name?"

    The lady looked up at him and then quickly looked away. He could see it was Nora Hunt, the gray roots grown out, hair cropped close around her face, but the same thin features, a nose as small and delicate as crystal.

    Drake took his hat off and scratched his temple. Then finally, after he'd straightened the hat back on his head, he said, "That's not her."

    "Shit," the sheriff said. "I thought for sure we had something here."

    "Sorry," Drake said. "Do me a favor and call Driscoll over at the DEA and tell him it's not her."

    "Yeah, I can do that."

    "What are you going to do with her now?"

    "I think we better release her," the sheriff said.

    Nora was watching them now, listening to everything they said.

    "Sorry," the sheriff said through the bars. "I thought you were someone else. Do us a favor and carry some ID next time."

    Nora didn't say anything.

    "You want to press charges against the sheriff's department?" Drake said. He smiled a bit, and the sheriff looked uncomfortable.

    "No," Nora said. "I just didn't think walking around without an ID could cause such a fuss."

    The sheriff went over and undid the lock and opened the gate to the cell. "Come on out," he said.

    "You going to give her a ride back to wherever you picked her up from?" Drake asked.

    The sheriff gave him a hurt look, then said under his breath, "Honestly, she wasn't so much fun to get into the car the first time."

    "I can give her a lift," Drake said. He looked at Nora. "If that's all right with you?"

    They drove up the road, past the town hall, past a Mexican restaurant with a green awning and neon beer signs in the window. Drake pulled over a half block down from the convenience store.

    "You going to get a couple movies with your rental card?" Drake said.

    They hadn't spoken at all in the car.

    "That and go buy some groceries," Nora said.

    Drake leaned into the windshield and looked up at the store awnings that appeared in a line down the street. They were parked next to a Laundromat, and he read the signs all down the block. At the end of the street, he could see the big diesel. "What happened to the trailer?"

    "Oh, you know," Nora said. "It's around."

    "Just around?"

    "Here and there."

    "Hopefully more here than there," he said. "Please tell me I did the right thing back at the sheriff's office."

    "You did the right thing."

    "Don't tell it to me just because I want you to."

    Nora made an ugly face, then looked out the window. He thought she'd just get out then, just get out and leave him there in the cruiser. And he didn't know what he'd do about that, what he could do, or what he'd want to if it did come down to it. When she turned back, she said she couldn't remember his name.

    "Bobby Drake."

    She looked away, looked into the Laundromat, at the people in there with their spinning clothes. "Bobby, I'm not going to take you up there and show you we're doing fine. But I'll tell you we're okay, we're raising horses and leasing a bit of land. And it's been good to us so far."

    "What kind of horses?"

    "Quarter horses."

    "Are you racing them?"

    "Not yet."

    "You must live pretty hand to mouth?"

    "We do all right. Two foals this spring, and I give lessons on the weekends."

    "Maybe I should come by."

    Nora smiled. "No, I don't think Phil would like that."

    "No, I don't think he would either."

    Nora leaned over in the seat and gave him a hug. The smell of pears, something else, too, sweat possibly, fear. "Thank you," she said.

    "Wait," he said. She had the door halfway open. She turned back to look at him. "Why up here? Why so close to Canada? Why not just move up there?"

    "Phil knows this area. Knows the hills and knows the mountains. We weren't going to move somewhere we didn't know anything about."

    "You could have, though. It probably would have been better."

    "We're too old for that, too old to start again."

    "You could have avoided incidents like today if you had. I'm glad I was called to come take a look, but I may not be the one to show up next time."

    Nora looked up the street for a while; she seemed to be thinking this over. "Are you going to say anything?"

    "No. The way I see it, you're both good people, it's just bad things that happen."

    "They certainly do."

    "Just tell Phil not to make any cargo deals across international borders."

    Nora smiled. "I don't think it's crossed his mind."

    "I don't think it's something I could look the other way on."

    She made a little motion to get out of the car.

    He put out a hand to stop her. "What happened to the heroin Hunt got off Thu?" He said this quickly, as if it had just come into his mind, but the truth was he'd been thinking about it for a year. Thinking about it and in a way regretting it. "What did Hunt do with it?" he asked.

    She looked back at him, her hand on the door handle. "Bobby, you don't have anything to worry about," Nora said. "As far as I know, it's gone. Just the way Grady went, dead and gone."

    He couldn't question this. In any case, he didn't say anything as she opened the cruiser door.

    She got out of the car and walked up the street. And for a moment she turned and looked back at him. He raised his hand. Nora smiled, then looked away and kept walking. When she reached her truck, he saw her climb into the cab. The brake lights went on, and she shifted the transmission down through reverse and into drive. He watched the truck pull out and go up the street, and when it was out of sight, he started his car and pulled a U-turn, heading back the way he'd come.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    Thank you to everyone who has made this novel possible. To my friends James Scott, Chip Cheek, Lizzie Stark, thank you for being there from the beginning. Thank you for being there now. Thank you to all the literary journals that published my first stories, and gave me my start as a writer. Thank you to my agent, Nat Sobel, who found me in one of those journals and encouraged me to write this novel. Thank you.

    Thank you to the St. Botolph Club in Boston for the grant allowing me to pay my mortgage while writing this book. Thank you to the Vermont Studio Center for giving me a place to write. Thanks to Bread Loaf and all the waiters of 2008. Thanks to all the people at Great Bay; my life has been enriched by what I learned there.

    To the readers who helped shape this book, Debra DiDomenico, Tony Matson, Zachary Watterson, everyone at Sobel Weber, especially Nat, Judith, Cate, Kirsten, Julie, and Adia – thank you for helping to make each draft better than the last. Thank you to Paul Sullivan for his advice. To the Sorensens, thanks for showing me how to shoot a twelve-gauge, drive a boat, and use a chain saw.

    To everyone at Simon & Schuster, especially Francesca Main and Ian Chapman, thank you for everything. To Abner Stein, thank you for bringing this story to their attention. Without your support, the support of Simon & Schuster, and the support of people like Judy Clain and Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown, none of this would have been possible. Thank you.

    And of course, thank you to the writers Tom Franklin, John Casey, Robert Stone, Cormac McCarthy, and Graham Greene. Thank you for laying the foundation for a novel like mine. Without
Poachers, Spartina, Dog Soldiers, No Country for Old Men,
and
The Power and the Glory
, this book wouldn't exist.

    Finally, to my parents, thank you for always supporting me, always encouraging me, and of course, making me read. And thank you to my wife, Karen, for putting up with pipes bursting, buildings catching fire, and any other disasters that may have befallen us.

Table of Contents

I. 2

BY AIR.. 2

II. 5

BY SEA.. 5

III. 16

BY LAND.. 16

IV.. 23

CONFESSIONS. 23

V.. 37

SNOW... 37

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 42