The Wooden Sea (32 page)

happened. Please don't ask me to explain it--that's just the way it is. I have no time left to worry about what else to do with this body. We gotta dump it, and Floon's gotta get out of here. I may be wrong but I gotta go with that instinct. There are other things way more important."

"More important than _this, _Frannie?"

"Much more, believe me."

The backseaters looked at each other.

"Floon, why were you at George's house just now?"

"Because I have invented something and I need the best person in the business to write the instructions."

I slapped the steering wheel for emphasis while keeping eye contact with George in the mirror. "You mean he came to you out of the blue _today, _this morning, to ask if you'd work with him?"

"Not exactly. He called yesterday to say he was in New York and asked if we could meet."

"That's still too much of a coincidence. This whole thing ain't no fluke."

"What isn't?" "It can't be a coincidence that Mr. Floon here was visiting you _today _at the same time as I came to the house with _him. _I hitchhiked a thumb over my shoulder, assuming everyone knew who I was talking about.

A flame of pain seared across the inside of my forehead forcing me to squint my eyes almost closed. It shot to the back of my head where, for an excruciating few seconds, it flickered on and off like a blazing neon sign. It stopped. But I realized I had better not drive anymore because if another big one hit there was a good chance I would drive this snazzy new car right into someone's living room and solve all our problems.

When I pulled up in front of our house, loud music was coming from an open window upstairs.

Pauline's room. I wondered if George had brought her home from the hospital before meeting with Floon. Despite everything I had to smile. A yellow and green summery day. Loud techno music pouring out of a teenager's bedroom. What could be more normal and reassuring than that scene?

Her mother was in the hospital but she would be all right now. There was nothing to worry about. Magda would be home soon.

I stood on the sidewalk looking at our house, loving what I saw. I knew I must get moving but give me one more minute to look and remember, just one more. How happy I'd been here. How much I would have given to spend the rest of my life knowing these women day to day, getting older, watching Pauline grow up and into a valid and interesting life of her own. Maybe if I'd had more time I would have been able to figure out a little of what made my own life tick. Maybe not, but it wouldn't have even mattered so long as I could live it here, around these people, in this town I loved. No matter what was about to happen to me, I had no reason to complain.

I was tempted to run upstairs and check on Pauline to see how she was doing, reassure her diat
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everything was going to be fine now. But there was no time.

Nor did I want her to see Floon's car and ask questions about what was going on.

Instead I went to the garage to look for the shovel. My car was parked in there, which reminded me of finding the resurrected Old Vertue in its trunk the other night. Which reminded me of having that nice chat with Pauline in the car about what she wanted to do with her life. On and on, everything in that dusty place reminding me of something else, and my nostalgia for my flickering life grew even keener.

I searched the crowded garage for the tool I had already used to bury both my fadier and a four-hundred-year-old dog (twice). I discovered it leaning next to a rake against a far wall. Next to it was a window that gave a view of the street. Reaching for the shovel I glanced out the window and saw a police car coming up the street. It stopped almost directly across from Floon's car.

Of course the cops would eventually show up here when they discovered I wasn't being held captive at the town library (by a man who had just been killed by himself and whose corpse was lying in that car directly across the street from them). The situation was so surreal that it should have been funny but it was way too late for that.

Adele Kastberg and Brett Rudin got out of the police car. That was good to see because both of them were dimwits. I would have been much more concerned if Bill Pegg had showed up now at my door. These two cops walked up our path, but at a certain point I lost sight of them because of my limited view. The doorbell chimed its familiar ding-dong. Unconsciously I found myself mimicking those sounds quietly--_ding-dong--just _so I could hear them another time and memorize a little more of what would be gone soon. All three of us waited for someone to answer the door. When no one came they rang it again. Pauline had her music cranked way up. I could hear it through the walls of the garage.

Could she hear the ring behind that wall of sound in her room? I closed my eyes and willed her to come answer the door. In the middle of that willing, I heard a car engine start.

Opening my eyes, I caught sight of the tail end of Floon's car slowly driving away down the street.

"Where the hell are they going? You gotta to be shitting me!" I bit my hand.

It hurt, but I had to do something to vent my frustration.

Two stupid cops stood on my doorstep, effectively trapping me in my own damned garage.

And even if I was able to escape, what was I supposed to do now that the car with the evidence had just taken off?

Where _were _they going? What did they think diey were doing? In truth I knew exactly what they were doing and it made total sense--they wanted to get out of there because they carried a body in their car.

But what the hell was I supposed to do in the meantime--wait there with the shovel until either diey decided to come back or my head popped?

Luckily a little police muscle went into action. Knowing Officer Adele and her diplomatic manner, she was probably the one who started banging on the front door so loudly that they could have heard the sound down the block. That was Adele's way of doing police work, but for
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the first time in all the years we had worked together I was happy for it.

The Isuzu disappeared completely from view just as the music in the house stopped. Some more time passed but then there was Pauline's voice, joined by the others. I was so relieved that I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes.

The three of them spoke a while, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Then came the sound of the front door closing. I assumed they had all gone into the house. Which meant I had very little time to escape before they came out again. I looked around the garage for anything beside the too-loud and obvious car that could get me away from there fast and silently.

At the beginning of the summer Magda was inspired by some rah-rah article on fitness she read and bought a mountain bike. Pauline and I were struck dumb by the gesture. As expected, my wife used it maybe three times before deciding she wasn't the big calves/wet armpits kind of girl. The minute she showed me the bike I christened it Tinkerbell because of its ridiculous color--gold-metal-flake pink.

I hate bicycles and bicycling. They poke you in the ass and make you pant for no good reason.

Bikes are also dangerous as hell and serious traffic hazards.

Furthermore, people who use them are invariably self-righteous about various unappealing subjects--ecology, fitness, or their resting pulse rate. The hell with them--when I want my heart to beat fast I'll have sex.

So dig this--the ultimate indignity: there goes Chief of Police McCabe pedaling furiously down his street like a fucking wacko on a cute little pink bike. And is that a dirty shovel lying across the handlebars of the bike?

Indeed it is. But can't the man see that the tires on it are so low on air that they might as well be flat?

The bike was small, and because I didn't adjust the seat before launching myself, my knees came up almost to my chest as I pedaled, making the whole experience ten times more uncomfortable and ridiculous-looking.

Follow that Isuzu! But how could I when it had a five-minute head start on me and two hundred more horsepower than I did? Down one street, down another.

Looking everywhere for their car. The shovel slipping around on the handlebars and almost dropping a half dozen times.

Passing too many people I knew, I tried as hard as I could not to be seen.

Failed miserably.

"Whoa there, Chief. Nice bike!" Smirk.

"Hey, Fran, you suddenly going athletic?" Big laugh.

Or just plain smiles and more chuckles as these people--my friends and neighbors--watched a fool roll by with his high-pumping knees and semiflat tires.

I thought I saw their car going left at the intersection of Broadway and
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April Street but most likely that was wishful thinking. I kept trying to figure out where they might go. All at once I dropped the shovel and, braking hard, listened to it clatter and dance down the street. I picked it up and started again. George must have been driving the car now because he knew

Crane's View. But where would my friend go? If he were writing the instructions for how to get out of this fix, what would he say?

Pedal pedal pedal--pedaling through town I kept imagining the music from _The Wizard of Oz _when Miss Gulch rides away on her bicycle with Toto the dog her captive. Pedal pedal pedal-- this was definitely not how I had imagined my last days on earth.

I was miserably out of shape; my cigarette lungs were screaming help; every moment I felt like my whole body might just cave in and stop.

The number of possible places they might have gone was just too big. I had to make a choice now and go with it before my body disintegrated.

"All right, the woods. Let's go to the woods." And that's what I did.

At Mobile Lane I hung a left and took a shortcut toward the Tyndall house that I had been using for forty years. Now that I knew where I was heading I

felt better in my head but my body was shot. When she was enthusing about the benefits of her new exercise regime, Magda had told me that riding a bicycle was second only to swimming in total aerobic training. I said uh-huh and continued reading the newspaper.

Now sadly I knew what she meant. I was sweating, panting, and cursing at the same time.

Simultaneous breakdown on all fronts. Was that aerobic too? And those woods behind Lionel Tyndall's house suddenly seemed a _lot _farther away than I remembered. Then again it had been many years since I had gone to that part of Crane's View on foot, or any kind of pedal other than a gas pedal.

Exercise fiends always crow that you see more when you're walking or hiking.

But the only thing I saw more of at the moment was my fury and frustration at trying to move Tinkerbell forward at more than a crawl.

When it felt like things couldn't get any worse I heard the sound of a siren coming up fast behind me. For a molten moment I felt like I had when I was a kid and forever in trouble with the law: All I could think was _run_--get out of there. Don't let them catch you! I even considered jumping off the bike and sprinting for cover. But if I was the cop in the car and saw that, I'd wonder gee, how come that fellow on the pink bike is running away? So instead of fleeing, I put my head down as low as it would go and bravely pedaled on, hoping the gods or maybe even the gang from Rat's Potato would help me out here.

And I guess someone did because the patrol car screamed by me way too fast and straight on down the road. I'm sure whoever was driving was having such a good time playing with the siren and high speed that he didn't think a second about the sunken-headed man puffing along on a bicycle. Which gave me something new to think/worry about as I took the last few lefts and rights:

Where _was _that car going in such a dangerous hurry? It was departmental policy not to speed in town unless there was real trouble somewhere. What new complication or calamity had just happened?

Luckily there was Tyndall's big house, and immediately behind it the aqueduct that was another part of the shortcut to the woods if you were on foot or a bike. For the only time since I'd set
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off from my house I was happy to be riding these wheels. Another five minutes and I would come to the road that led off into the woods. If there was no sign of George I hadn't a clue of what to do next.

There was no sign of George. I took the road anyway and drove into the forest. If you'd said there was a steep hill ahead that I had to climb, I

would have gotten off the bike, turned around, and pushed it home, to hell with the consequences.

I rode slowly on, seeing nothing, growing more confused and disappointed by the foot. Still, when I got to the end of the woods I turned around and came back, looking just as hard as I had before. An old policeman's instincts die hard. Looking back and forth from one side of the shadowed road to the other and then in among the trees for a sign--any sign that they had come here to bury the body. But how could they do that if they didn't have a shovel?

"Damn you, George, why didn't you do what I said? It would have been the easiest way out of this mess." Which I knew wasn't really true but it felt good to say it to no one but the trees and Tinkerbell.

Cars flew past. I wobbled/pedaled as close to the side of the road as possible. I didn't want to be seen but how do you avoid that when you're in the middle of nowhere riding a pink bicycle? Never once did it cross my rattled mind that the Isuzu boys were in a four-wheel-drive vehicle which--ergo!--meant they could go off the road.

Shortly before I gave up and was beginning to think about my next move, I looked to one side of the road and saw Little Frannie emerging from a dark clump of pine trees.

He saw me but didn't appear one bit surprised. Hands stuffed deep in his khaki pockets, he didn't look happy. Rolling slowly over to him, I put my feet down to stop.

"Hey."

"Hey." He wouldn't look at me. "That's a pretty cool-looking bike.

Except it's pink."

For one ridiculous second I felt embarrassed and an urgent need to explain.

"Well, it's not mine. It belongs to my wife. Where are the other guys?"