The Truth of the Matter (8 page)

“There’s a station about two miles down where you can get the bulb replaced,” the highway patrolman said. He raised his eyebrows, and took in the interior of the car with a glance. “I noticed you people are from out of state.”

“That’s right,” Roebuck said, regaining his composure. “We’re going to visit my wife’s family in Colorado. Her mother’s sick.”

The patrolman nodded. “Well, I guess there’s no need for a citation if you get the light repaired right away.”

“Thank you, officer.” Ellie smiled. “It must have just burned out. I took the car to have it checked before we left on this trip.”

“That’s right,” Roebuck said. “I’m in the auto repair business myself. I should have checked it over personally.”

The patrolman shrugged. “That’s how it always is. I get citations for burning leaves.” He gave them a parting grin. “Have a good trip, folks. And I hope your mother’s all right.”

“Thank you,” Ellie called after him as they watched him walk away, adjusting his cap in the wind from a passing car that might or might not have been going too fast.

The flashing red light atop the police car died as the patrolman swung sharply back onto the highway and drove away.

Roebuck and Ellie did stop at the service station down the highway, where they had the taillight bulb replaced and the gas tank filled before driving on.

“We better start playing it safer,” Roebuck said as they pulled out of the station.

“I guess you’re right.” Ellie looked at the speedometer carefully. “Why don’t we stop at a grocery and get something for our meals? That way we wouldn’t have to risk eating in those greasy roadside places.”

“I was thinking that myself.”

“We can get some donuts or something for breakfast,” she said, “and we can buy a coffeepot and some coffee. We can fix us something right in our motel room.”

“We’ll stop at the next town,” Roebuck decided, slouching down and resting his head again on the back of the seat.

He closed his eyes, but this time he didn’t sleep.

Roebuck drove the station wagon slowly out of the Jolly Rest Motel’s lot, onto the baking expanse of concrete highway, and accelerated in a smooth and steady rush to seventy miles an hour. Ellie sat beside him, munching a glazed donut, sipping her coffee from the motel bathroom’s sanitary paper cup. They drove away from the low morning sun, into the west, the green scenery rotating gently and sliding past them as they rode the snaking highway.

They drove for perhaps fifteen minutes before they passed a crude wooden sign almost obscured by dew-bent weeds.
LAKE CHIPPEWA
5
MILES
—it read in weather-beaten yellow letters—
CABINS
—
FISHING
—
BOATS
—
REST
—
RELAX.

“Do you think we can run all the way to California?” Ellie asked, finishing the last donut and brushing sugar from her hands.

Roebuck grinned in his best desperado manner. “I’ll tell you one thing. Nobody’s going to stop us.”

“I know you mean that, Lou, but do you think it’s the smart thing to do? I mean, won’t somebody somewhere figure out that we keep going the same direction?”

Roebuck had a vision of dozens of important-looking individuals gathered around a gigantic wall map, moving red-flagged pins and circling areas with red pencil. “Maybe,” he said.

“We could stop,” Ellie said. “We could fool them and hole up, rent one of those cabins.”

Placing an unlit cigarette between his lips, Roebuck pushed in the car’s lighter. “Yeah, I saw the sign.”

“We could pretend we were a couple on a fishing vacation. Nobody’d suspect anything.” Ellie was getting enthusiastic. “We could buy some fishing stuff and supplies and just take it easy.”

Roebuck touched the hot tip of the lighter to his cigarette. “I don’t think much of the idea. We should move, put miles behind us….”

“But that’s what everybody does who runs from the law. It’s just human nature, and they know it. But don’t you know that they can radio ahead, that they’re all across the country, that what we’re running from keeps moving right along with us?”

That was sure as hell true, Roebuck thought. It followed, it waited ahead of them, like the sun, slowly passing them at thousands of miles an hour to wait for them on the other horizon.

“Anyway,” Ellie said, “it’d be good for you. You’re too nervous, Lou. Always worrying about who’s behind us on the highway, where we’re going to eat, how we’re going to steal another car….”

“It would solve that problem,” Roebuck said; “We wouldn’t have to steal another car for a while.” He’d been worrying about that.

“And nobody’d notice out of state license plates at a place like that,” Ellie said. “They’d just think we came here to do some fishing.”

“I don’t like to be trapped, though,” Roebuck said tensely. “I don’t like to be walled up.”

“That’s just a feeling, Lou. You’d be safer where nobody could see you than moving along out here on the highway in a stolen car.”

“Understand,” Roebuck said, “it’s not just me I’m thinking of.”

“I know, Lou.” Ellie touched his knee with her fingertips.

Ahead of them was another wooden sign, like the first only bigger. The letters were freshly painted on this one, and beneath
LAKE CHIPPEWA
was an arrow pointing up a narrow dirt road.

“Whatever you want, Lou.”

The sign flashed past.

After a few minutes Roebuck said, “It sure would be a relief not to have to keep looking in this rear view mirror.”

Ellie was silent.

“We could go back,” Roebuck said thoughtfully. “We could lay low for a while and listen to the radio, wait for things to loosen up.”

“It’s up to you, Lou.”

Roebuck slowed the car.

“Lake Chippewa,” Ellie said, “that’s Indian.”

“I know,” Roebuck said absently. “My mother was half Pawnee.”

He stepped down resolutely on the accelerator.

“What are we going to do, Lou?”

“We’ll stop at the next place we see where there’s a big store or shopping center and buy some fishing gear, then we’ll go back to Lake Chippewa and look over those cabins.”

They stopped at Millbrook, fifteen miles farther down the highway. There was a good-sized department store there, with a big sporting goods section. Roebuck and Ellie were examining some casting rods when a smiling sales clerk approached them.

“Those are the best for the price,” the clerk said earnestly. He was a middle-aged man with a seamed face and horn-rimmed glasses.

“I like this one,” Roebuck said knowledgeably, choosing another rod. “Plenty of whip to it. We’ll take two of these.”

The clerk beamed. “All right, sir, anything else?”

“Some fishing flies,” Roebuck said, “and a tackle box—and I’ll take one of those hats with the mosquito net hanging from the brim.”

“Yes, sir! That’ll keep the pesky devils away from your face and neck!” The clerk rushed to gather things up and display a case of colorful flies to Roebuck.

“Now this is the bait that gets results,” he said, pointing to a particularly repulsive one. “Wonder Worm! We’ve had nothing but raves from our customers who’ve tried it. It’s especially good for trout.”

“I’ll take two,” Roebuck said, “and two of the spotted dragonflies, and one of the minnows that you put the little pill in to make their tail wiggle.”

The clerk stared through his horn-rimmed glasses. “Do you do much fishing, sir?”

“Not freshwater,” Roebuck said casually, “mostly sword-fish.”

The clerk hurried to get the flies Roebuck had requested.

Roebuck paid cash and watched as everything was wrapped. “Tell me,” he said, “where’s the best fishing around here?”

“There’s Lake Manitoshi,” the clerk answered, busily fighting the rustling brown paper. “Then there’s the Great Horney River and Lake Chippewa about fifteen miles east of here.”

“Where’s Lake Manitoshi?” Roebuck asked. “I think we’ll go there.”

“It’s about five miles west,” the clerk said. “Good bass this time of year.”

“Thanks,” Roebuck said, taking the wrapped packages. Ellie carried the rods and he took the tackle box.

“You won’t regret buying that Wonder Worm!” the clerk called after them as they walked away.

They got in the car, made a wide U-turn, and headed back the way they had come.

L
AKE CHIPPEWA WAS
more than Roebuck had expected. It was a large lake, with many coves, banked by hills of tall and full-branched trees. The water was a deep greenish blue, and there were a few motionless boats on it, with motionless fishermen. Some of the small boats were tied up at the bank across the wide lake, near cabins that could be seen here and there at the edge of the woods.

“It’s beautiful,” Ellie said, as a stocky, red-faced man in a T-shirt walked toward them smiling. He was wearing an old gray hat covered with fishing flies. As he got closer Roebuck noticed a spotted dragonfly like the two he’d just bought.

“They all say that,” the red-faced man said with a wider grin. “It sure enough is a pretty spot. I’m Hobey. Can I help you folks?”

“We’d like to see a cabin,” Roebuck said.

“Sure enough. Just the two of you?”

Roebuck nodded.

“If you get in your car an’ follow me in the jeep,” Hobey said, “we can scoot right over to the best cabin on the lake. Just vacated yesterday mornin’.”

“Lead the way,” Roebuck said.

It was a small pine cabin, with a kitchen, a comfortable-looking bed and, to Ellie’s delight, a real fireplace.

“Ain’t too fancy,” Hobey said. “But then the price ain’t either.”

“How much?” Roebuck asked.

“Fifty dollars a week suit you folks?”

“Suits us fine.”

“How long you gonna be stayin’ with us?”

“About two weeks,” Ellie cut in.

Roebuck made no objection. “We’ll pay in advance,” he said, “if it’s all right with you.”

“I’ll make you folks out a receipt,” Hobey said with a smile. “What’s the name?”

“Watson,” Roebuck said without hesitation. “Mr. and Mrs. Lou Watson.” He drew ten ten-dollar bills from his wallet as Hobey scribbled on a yellow piece of paper.

“Hope you folks enjoy your fishin’,” Hobey said, handing the receipt to Roebuck and slipping the ten bills in his breast pocket without bothering to count them.

Roebuck and Ellie walked with him back to his jeep.

“You folks done much fishin’ around here?”

“No,” Roebuck said, “mostly up north. Michigan, Canada.”

“Say,” Hobey said, “I’d like to go to Canada.”

“It’s great fishing,” Roebuck said. “I caught one of the biggest catfish on record there. Had to fold it to get it into the trunk of the car.”

“It was a little sports car,” Ellie said.

Hobey laughed. “Still big enough.” He pointed to various parts of the wide lake. “Over there near them dead trees is where they been gettin’ a lot of bluegill; over there by them boats they’re fishin’ for bass and carp; your catfish you’ll find in the channels and coves. We got some pretty good-size trout, too. That green rowboat tied up down their goes with the cabin.”

“Thanks,” Roebuck said.

Hobey squinted at them. “What kind of bait you folks usin’?”

“I had great luck with the Wonder Worm up north,” Roebuck said. “Caught a nine pound bass with it last summer.”

“Say,” Hobey said, “that’s a bait they use a lot around here this summer. Guess it takes a while for the word to get around.”

Roebuck smiled. “I guess it does.”

“Well, catch some big ones,” Hobey said as he climbed into the jeep and gunned the engine. They watched him bump away in the squat vehicle down the uneven road that serviced the cabin.

“It looks nice,” Ellie said, turning and surveying the cabin, “better than a motel.”

“You won’t get an argument out of me,” Roebuck said. “Let’s get our stuff from the car.”

“Do you want to use the fireplace tonight?” Ellie asked as they were opening the back of the station wagon.

“Too hot for a fire.”

“I know, but I’ve always liked to watch the flames dance in a fireplace. My mother’s house had a real fireplace.”

Roebuck reached into the back of the car for the fishing equipment. “We’ll see,” he said.

After they had moved their things into the cabin, Roebuck turned the station wagon around so the stolen license plate faced the thick woods. He filled a bucket with water from the outside tap of the cabin, then he returned to the car, poured the water on some bare ground and stooped for a handful of mud. Carefully, he smeared the mud on the license plate to obscure the numbers, then he splattered the back of the station wagon with mud so the plate itself wouldn’t be too conspicuous.

The voice behind him startled him.

“We forgot to buy some fishing clothes for you,” Ellie said.

Roebuck stood slowly, in relief. “I’ll wear what I have on today. Tomorrow morning we can drive to the nearest town and buy what clothes we need.”

“I’ll go myself,” Ellie said. “That way you won’t even have to be seen.”

Roebuck walked with his hands cupped, idly squishing mud between his fingers as they returned to the cabin.

They spent the rest of the day getting used to their new surroundings. Ellie put things away in the cabin while Roebuck tried to relax by puttering with the new fishing equipment. He sat outside the cabin in a small webbed folding chair, stringing fishing line, attaching sinkers, looking up now and then to note with satisfaction that the lake was large and unsymmetrical, so that the cabin was quite secluded.

Just before noon Ellie made some coffee and opened a can of chili for lunch. They decided while they ate that they should do some fishing for appearance’s sake even if they caught nothing. So after lunch they carried rods and tackle box to the bank and set themselves adrift in the small wooden rowboat.

Roebuck rowed the boat to near the middle of the lake, where the sun-shot water was greenest. He looked the fisherman, with his pants rolled to the knees and his upper body bare. He wore his new hat with the mosquito net hanging from the brim, but he soon found that the net was rubbing a sore spot on the tip of his nose, so he ripped it off and wore the hat without it.