Affliction (16 page)

But this was not anger or impatience or phony affection he was expressing for Twombley; it was almost tenderness, protectiveness, concern. Wade liked it: he did not know why and maybe did not even know it was a fact, but he had loved crazy old Gordon LaRiviere since he was a kid, practically, when he first went to work for him right out of high school, and he always needed new reasons to explain his love of the man. LaRiviere's love of someone else, even a man like Evan Twombley, might be one.

They were silent the rest of the way. By the time they arrived at the top, where there were two cruisers drawn in neatly at the right side of the road opposite Jack's truck, it had stopped snowing altogether. Three troopers, one talking to Jack, a second with a German shepherd on a leash, the third with a Polaroid camera in his hand, stood at the front of Jack's truck, and a fourth trooper walked through the snow toward them from LaRiviere's cabin on the rise beyond.

To Wade, as he pulled in behind the cruisers, all the men looked oddly happy. They wore sly smiles on their faces, as if they had just won a bet with a fool. Jack had both fists placed against the hood of his truck and was shaking his head slowly back and forth, while two of the troopers, hands in pockets, watched and listened to the third talk to him. The talker glanced across the hood of the truck at Wade and LaRiviere as they came up to them, and went on talking.

"So I says to her, 'Lady, I don't give a shit if you're John F. Kennedy himself. I didn't vote for him when he was alive and I ain't voting for him now.' “ The trooper was a tall wiry man in his late forties; his hair looked dyed with black shoe
polish, and his high flat cheekbones gave his gray eyes a permanent squint. He had a low rumbling voice that stroked itself as he spoke. “Hello, Gordon,” he said to LaRiviere. “Wade.” Then he went on, “ 'I clocked you at a hundred and five between Lincoln and Woodstock,' I says to her, and she reaches into this little leather bag she's got on the seat there and pulls out this fucking hundred-dollar bill, so I says to her, 'Ma'am, unless you're just trying to show me a picture of the late president, you better put that back, because up here bribing a police officer's a criminal offense.' “

Jack stood up straight and faced the man, smiling. “A hundred and five,” he said. “That's wicked fast. What was she driving?” he asked. “Hey, Wade. Hello, Gordon,” he added, casting a quick look their way.

“Maserati. One of those hundred-thousand-dollar wop cars you can't even get your feet into. Must be like driving in a condom.”

Jack laughed and folded his arms over his chest and turned to face LaRiviere. “Well, Gordon,” he said. Then, suddenly serious, he sighed. “You heard the news,” he said.

“Some. I heard some. I heard Twombley got shot.”

“He did,” Jack said somberly, but almost as if he were merely announcing the man's departure, Wade thought. Though there was a slight note of regret in Jack's voice, it was as if Twombley had left early for lunch or a meeting in town before they had a chance to get their deer this morning. It was a serious event they were discussing: men from this region, when something disastrous happens and the thing must be spoken of, talk aslant and sometimes even joke in order to talk about it at all.

“Fuck,” LaRiviere said. He exhaled loudly and looked off toward his cabin. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Wade reached down and patted the German shepherd on its wide head. “How you been?” he asked the tall black-haired trooper, a captain, Asa Brown, whom Wade had dealt with before. Wade did not particularly like Brown, and he was sure that Brown did not much like him, either. Actually, Wade thought Brown a dishonest braggart, and he believed that Brown thought Wade incompetent.

“Not bad, Wade. Not bad. Had me a run-in the other day with one of them Kennedy types. I was just telling Jack here.
Watch the dog, Wade. He takes a mind to, he'll tear your fucking hand off.”

“Oh, he likes me,” Wade said, but he withdrew his hand and shoved it into his coat pocket. “Doncha?”

Still regarding the view, LaRiviere said, “Twombley shot bad?”

“I'd say so,” Jack said.

“Thirty-thirty at close range,” Brown said.

“Jesus.” LaRiviere whistled.

The men were silent for a few seconds. Then Wade said, “Will he make it?”

“Nope,” Brown answered. “DOA. Dead on arrival.”

The trooper with the dog, a burly blond kid in his early twenties wearing a pimply shaving rash on his throat like a pink ruff, said to Brown, “You want me to head on back now?”

“Yeah, might's well. Get started on the paperwork. I got to talk to the next of kin, I suppose.”

LaRiviere looked at Jack. “You see it?”

“Nope. Heard it, though. We wasn't very far apart. I'd spotted this big buck, and then I heard the gun go off and turned around, and Twombley was gone. Disappeared. Then I looked over the little cliff we was using for a stand, and there the fucker was, deader'n shit.”

“Blew the poor bastard wide open,” Brown said. “Thirty-thirty. Soft-nosed bullets. He had a bigger hole in back than in front, hole you could put your head in. And he had a pretty big hole in the front too. You could've put your fist in that one.”

“Well,” LaRiviere said. “Well.” He paused. “Think the snow's done?”

“Looks like it to me,” Brown said, and he peered up at the creamy sky. “For today.”

Jack looked straight ahead and at no one in particular. “It's a real early winter,” he offered.

Wade said nothing. He was staring into Jack's impassive face, catching glimpses of light in the darkness there, flashes and glints of heated metal whirling in a blackened pit. The bits of light that he saw, the heat that he felt, he had never seen or felt in Jack before, and they surprised Wade. He had known the tall angular youth since the boy first showed promise as an athlete in grade school, that one summer Wade coached the Lawford Pony League team and, thanks to Jack, they went all the way to the state semifinals down in Manchester.

The trooper with the dog and his partner with the camera crossed the road and got into the lead cruiser, turned it around carefully and headed back down the mountain. The third trooper stood at ease a short ways behind Brown, as if awaiting further orders.

LaRiviere looked at his watch and said, “Well, shit. This's gonna be one fucking mess to clean up. Twombley's son-in-law and I suppose his daughter are up for the weekend. Didn't you say you seen him already this morning, Wade?”

“Yeah. I did. I seen them.”

“You know where they're staying?” Brown asked LaRiviere.

“The family's got a place on the lake, out on the point on Agaway. Nice place. They come up summers and during the winter on weekends for skiing. You know, they go to Water-ville mainly, and over to Franconia and Loon, for skiing. Nice place. Sauna, hot tub, the works. Cost a fucking penny, I'll tell you. Fellow from Concord built it for him. I dug the wells.”

“I dug the wells,” Wade said. “Over three hundred feet apiece, fourteen gallons a minute each.”

LaRiviere stared at Wade with obvious irritation and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

“You know the place?” Brown asked the trooper behind him, ignoring Wade.

“I don't think so.”

“No, I don't think you do, either,” Brown said. “You want to talk to them, Gordon?” he asked. “Tell them about the old man's tragic demise? You know them. You knew the old man.”

“Sure. What the fuck. My day's already ruined,” he said. “Gimme the keys,” he said to Wade. “You can go back with Jack.”

Wade said okay and handed over the keys. Then he said, “I'm still going to give that bastard a summons, you know.”

LaRiviere looked at him hard and was silent. His stare said, What the hell are you telling me now, you dumb stubborn bastard?

“I mean, it's too bad about Twombley and all, but shit, right's right,” Wade said. He turned to Jack. “The fucking son-in-law, whatzizname, Mel Gordon, practically ran me over this morning, passed a stopped school bus and everything. In front of the school. He's goddamned lucky he didn't kill somebody's kid.”

Jack didn't respond. He seemed to see straight through Wade to the snowy woods beyond.

Brown smiled his thin smile, like a garter snake. “I didn't know you was such a hardass, Wade,” he said. “Give the guy a break. If you want, I'll tell him that by the way the local sheriff's pissed off, but because of the circumstances and all, he's letting this one go.”

“I'm not a sheriff, Asa.”

“I know.”

LaRiviere said, “You still got a shitload of plowing to do, Wade.”

“It ain't done, if that's what you mean.”

For a few seconds everyone was silent. “Something bugging you, Wade?” LaRiviere said.

“A few things. Yeah.”

“A few things. Well, right now we're not too interested. And as for a few things, there's a few things need taking care of first. Then you can be bugged all you want. On your own time, though, not mine.”

LaRiviere wheeled and started across the road toward his truck. Brown and the other trooper followed, heading for the cruiser.

When LaRiviere had got his truck turned around, he drew it up next to Wade; he reached across the seat and cranked down the window. “I expect I'll see the grader gone by the time I get back to the shop, Wade. And for Christ's sake, forget giving a fucking ticket to Mel Gordon. His father-in-law's just killed himself. Use your fucking head,” he said.

Wade said nothing.

In a low almost whispered voice, Jack asked, “You want me to do anything in particular at the shop?”

LaRiviere hesitated a second, then said, “You might's well take the rest of the day off. You look sort of fucked up to me. Which I can understand. You've already been paid for the day anyhow, right?”

“Well, not exactly. I mean, he never paid me.”

“You'll get your money,” LaRiviere said. “I'll see you get your money. Go on home. Get drunk or something. Start over tomorrow,” he said. “And don't talk to any newspapers about this,” he added. “Twombley's a big deal down in Massachusetts, you know.”

“What'll I say?”

“Just tell them the truth, for Christ's sake, it was an accident. But forget the details. Tell them they should talk to the state police about it, if they want details. Tell them if they want details your lawyer says you shouldn't comment.”

“My lawyer? I don't need no lawyer, do I?”

“No. No, of course not. Just say it, that's all.” Then he rolled up the window and drove off, with the cruiser following close behind.

The two vehicles disappeared, and it was suddenly silent, except for a light wind sifting through the pines, the ragged call of a crow in the distance, the squeak of Wade's boots in the snow as he shifted his weight. He lit a cigarette and offered Jack one.

“I got my own,” Jack said. He rummaged in his shirt pocket for his pack, got it out and took a light from Wade's yellow Bic.

“Did you smoke when you was playing ball?” Wade said.

“Why's that?”

“I dunno. Just asking. I keep thinking about quitting.”

“Yeah. I smoked since I was a kid. Sure I did.”

“No shit? Even in school you smoked? I don't remember you smoking till you come back from New Britain.”

“Sure. Coach never knew it. They had a rule. Not in the pros, of course, but in school.”

“Even in Pony League? You were smoking then?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. You was only—what?—twelve then.”

“I started when I was eleven.”

“No shit. I never knew that. I was coaching Pony League then, remember? I didn't have no rules about it, but I didn't think I needed them.”

Jack smiled slyly. “Sure, I remember.” Then he laughed. “You were a shitty coach, Wade. Pretty good left fielder, but a shitty coach. You oughta play some Legion ball next summer.”

“I know it.”

They were silent and both looked toward LaRiviere's cabin in the pine grove on the rise beyond the snow-covered muskeg—the tall angular young man in the orange hunting vest and quilted jacket and the shorter man in the dark-blue trooper's jacket and watch cap, both men with hands stuck in pockets, cigarettes in mouths, eyes squinted against the bright
light reflected off the snow. They looked like cousins or a younger and an older brother, blood relations separated by two decades, one man favoring the mother, the other favoring the father, two very different men connected by thin but unbreakable ties to a common past. They stood free of the truck and seemed to be waiting for someone to emerge from the cabin, a person bringing them important news—of a birth or a death or the arrival of the absolute truth.

Without looking at Jack, Wade said, “Where'd Twombley get shot?”

“In the chest.”

“No, I mean whereabouts.”

Jack pointed to his left, downhill through the scrub. “About a half mile in, along the old lumber road, down there where it looks out over the lake.”

“You bring him up yourself? That's a steep climb.”

“No, no. The ambulance guys, they lugged him up.”

“He was dead right away?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Jack turned to him and smiled. “What're you doing, playing cop?”

“No. I got to make a report to Fish and Game, of course, but I was just wondering, that's all. What'd he do, to shoot himself, I mean.”

“I don't know. Fuck, I was watching a fat old buck with a rack like a fucking elk or something stroll past. I guess Twombley slipped on the snow or something, fell over a rock. Who the fuck knows? It's rough ground down there, and he wasn't used to the woods. With the snow and all, he could slip easy. Who knows? I just heard the gun go off. Bang! Like that, and he was gone, blown away.” Jack flipped his cigarette butt into the snow a few yards in front of him.