Follow the Sharks (23 page)

“Oh, I know you can help me with the legal stuff,” he said. “I’ve always known that. There were times when I had my mind all made up to tell it all to you. When I left Jan and E.J. I wanted to spill my guts to you, I really did. But I didn’t want to see that look in your eyes, Brady, like I see now. I wanted you to respect me, and I didn’t want you to pity me. All I ever wanted was a little genuine respect from people. The only way I was going to get that was by working it out for myself.”

“So you kept running. That didn’t work, Eddie.”

He shrugged. “I never thought the bastards would do something like kidnap my son. The worst I figured was they’d kill me.”

From outside the barn came the roar of an engine. It belched three or four times, then died. “Well, that’s them,” said Eddie. “E.J. and Jake.”

I nodded. “Come back with us tonight, Eddie. Let’s set things right.”

He shook his head. “No. I need to think.”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said. “But, okay. We’re agreed?”

“We’re agreed.”

Eddie sighed and we stood up. He pumped the shotgun, ejecting three shells onto the floor of the barn. Then he hung the gun on pegs on the barn wall. He stooped to pick up the shells, thrust them into the pocket of his overalls, then went outside. I followed him.

The tractor was parked in the dusty farmyard under the shadow of a big solitary beech tree. E.J. and Jake stood side by side next to it. Their backs were to us. Jake had one hand thrust into the engine, and with the other he was making little circular movements. E.J.’s head was cocked up to watch the old man speak. It could have been a Norman Rockwell painting, Jake’s seamed old face furrowed like freshly plowed earth, and E.J.’s as pink as a new-born heifer, Jake’s full of love and E.J.’s full of trust.

When we approached, they turned.

“Hi, Dad,” said E.J. “Jake was just telling me about carburetors. They mix the gas with air so it’ll burn good.”

“Gol-danged thing’s all gunked up,” said Jake. He peered at me and frowned.

“This is Brady Coyne,” said Eddie. “Remember him?”

I held out my hand and Jake gripped it strongly. “Nope,” he said, squinting at my face.

“It was many years ago,” I said.

“Must’ve been,” said Jake. To Eddie he said, “E.J.’s gonna be a race car driver, he tells me. So he’s gotta know engines. He did a helluva job cuttin’ hay.”

“I can do it by myself as soon as my legs get longer,” said the boy. He looked at me and grinned. “Hi, Uncle Brady.”

I ruffled his hair. “Hi, pal.”

Eddie glanced at me, then put his hand on E.J.’s shoulder. “Uncle Brady came to take you home,” he said. “Vacation’s over.”

E.J. looked from Eddie’s face to mine. “Aw…”

“Now, never mind,” said Eddie. “You didn’t think you were going to stay here forever, did you? Your mother misses you.”

“You mean today?”

“Tonight,” said Eddie. “Right after supper.”

E
.J. AND I HAD
been on the road for half an hour before I became suspicious of the gray station wagon. It had appeared in my mirror shortly after E.J. and I left Jake and Eddie at the farm, and by the time we turned onto the highway in Williamstown I had to acknowledge that it could be following us.

I pulled into a Getty station and asked the attendant to check my oil and fill the gas tank. “Want a Coke, partner?” I said to E.J., who had thus far succeeded in fending off my conversational sallies.

“Okay. Sure.”

I dumped a pocketful of change into his cupped hands. “Get me one, too,” I told him.

The gray wagon, a late model Buick, slid past us. It contained two men, neither of whom turned his head in my direction. Nor did the car slow down or in any other way suggest that we were of any interest to its occupants. I jotted down the license number anyway.

E.J. climbed back into the car and handed me my Coke, along with the leftover change. We cracked the cans open and I held mine out to him. “Here’s to coming home,” I toasted.

“My mother doesn’t let me drink Coke,” he said, touching cans with me.

“Well, you’re with me, now.”

“Not for long.”

“She’s missed you. So have your grandparents. They’ve been terribly worried. They’ll be happy to see you.”

E.J. didn’t answer. He slouched against the car door and sipped his Coke.

I realized that I didn’t know much about talking to ten-year-old boys, especially one who had been kidnapped, whose father had rescued him, who had hid for several weeks, and who, now, was being taken back to the place where it had started.

The Buick picked us up again as we entered the North Adams business district. It maintained a discreet distance, leaving half a dozen cars between us. I knew there were many ways to explain it. But I remembered that fear that had glittered in Eddie’s eyes when we said good-bye in the Grabowski farmyard. He hugged E.J., who responded with a self-conscious grin, and then he leaned down to speak to me through the car window. “Be careful, will you?” he had said.

I smiled. “Sure. Don’t worry.”

“Look. I’m worried.”

I reached up to squeeze his arm. “I’ll be careful. Promise.”

Eddie had nodded without conviction. “You don’t know them.”

Outside of North Adams Route 2 climbs quickly into the mountains. There was a hairpin turn in the road where a parking area had been cleared for motorists to stop and admire the view westward toward New York and north to Vermont. I pulled in and turned off the ignition.

“Let’s get out and look at the sunset,” I said to E.J.

He shrugged his thin shoulders without looking at me. “I’m not really big on sunsets,” he said. But he opened the car door and got out.

We walked to the edge of the parking area, which was lined with boulders nearly the size of Volkswagens. Beyond the crude barricade the sheer face of the mountain fell straight down for what looked like half a mile. I hoisted E.J. up onto one of the rocks so he could see, keeping a firm grip on his belt. He wiggled and twisted, hinting that I should let go of him, that he was old enough to keep his own balance. I released my grip on his belt, but stayed close to him.

“It
is
pretty,” he said after a moment. “Do you think we can see Jake’s farm from here?”

“Nope. Too far away.”

As I was talking to E.J. I kept part of my attention focused on the road. The Buick moved past us. Again the two men failed to look in our direction as the car continued along the route that I was taking, heading east toward Boston.

I smoked a cigarette and watched the pink fade on the western horizon. E.J. clambered down from the rock, and we climbed back into my car.

I switched on the headlights. The road wound through the mountains. Signs warned us to beware of any number of dangers—falling rocks and crossing deer and slippery pavements and soft shoulders and fog.

At the crest of the hills the road leveled off and sliced through desolate pine and oak forest. I noticed headlights behind us, distant twin pricks of light. They seemed to be gaining on us rapidly. It could have been any vehicle, I knew, but my hands tightened on the steering wheel and I tromped on the accelerator. The little BMW jumped forward. I kept the speedometer on sixty-five, about as fast as I dared move along the twisting two-lane highway. When I glanced again into my rearview mirror I was startled to see headlights no more than fifty yards back, and gaining visibly. I pushed it up to seventy, then seventy-five, and had to brake hard as the road bent sharply to the left onto a long curving descent.

The car behind us matched our speed. I touched the brakes, then hit the accelerator, and was gratified to see the headlights behind us recede momentarily. But then the car reappeared, now only a few car lengths back. I pushed it up to eighty. The BMW purred sweetly and gripped the pavement through the curves.

But I could put no distance between us. I thought of simply pulling to the side of the road to allow our pursuers to pass, but I didn’t dare take the chance that they would stop, too. So as we approached the sharp left turn that I knew so well, that led to my favorite fly-fishing stretch of the Deerfield River, I said to E.J., “Hang on!”

I touched the brakes hard, released them, then hit them again, creating a long, controlled skidding spin. The rear of the BMW swerved around as I wrenched the wheel, and then we shot up the bumpy roadway that paralleled the river along some railroad tracks.

I turned off the headlights and downshifted to reduce speed without showing the brake lights. For a moment all was black outside, but my eyes quickly adjusted to the dim moonlight and I was able to follow the narrow pot-holed road that cut through the dense pine forest. I kept moving as fast as I dared, and was gratified to see nothing but darkness in the mirror. The Deerfield flowed along the left of the road, and I imagined big brown trout chasing minnows there.

We kept heading deeper into the woods on the rutted roadway. I crossed the river at an old railroad trestle and continued north, the river now on our right and far below us in the bottom of a rocky gorge. We were approaching the place I had taken that unplanned float trip, just below the dam.

I had nearly forgotten about E.J. I said to him, “You all right, old buddy?”

“Fine, sure. They were following us, huh?”

“I’m not sure. I think so. They’re gone now.”

“No, they’re not,” said E.J.

I glanced into the mirror but saw nothing. I eased to the side of the road and coasted to a stop. Then I turned in my seat. Far behind us I saw a glitter of lights flashing through the trees. They seemed to be moving slowly along the road toward us. They were still a quarter of a mile or so back. I put the car in gear and pulled ahead until I came to a parking area where I had left the car many times before to fish.

I tucked the BMW up under the boughs of a pine tree, well away from the road and, I hoped, out of sight.

“C’mon. Let’s get out,” I said to E.J.

We slid out of the car. “This way,” I said. “Give me your hand.” The bank sloped down sharply to the river. I knew there were pathways leading to the pools and riffles popular with fishermen, but it was too dark under the trees to find them, so we skidded and scrambled over and around boulders and fallen tree trunks. Saplings whipped my face and briers picked at my clothes. By the time we reached the bottom of the gorge I had acquired a hard knock on my shin and my chest was heaving from the effort. I still held tight to E.J.’s hand.

The river gurgled cheerily over the gravel bottom. The dam upstream had not begun its evening release. When it did, the place where we stood beside the river would lie under three feet of powerful current.

“Let’s just sit and be quiet,” I whispered to E.J., giving his hand a quick squeeze before I released it.

We sat side by side on a flat boulder. The burble of the river and the occasional shriek of a night bird seemed to intensify rather than disturb the vast wilderness silence. I wanted a cigarette, but decided not to chance it. After a few minutes I heard the murmur of a car moving in low gear. High above us, where the road passed, I could see lights playing through the trees. So they had a flashlight, or a spotlight on the car. Judging by the movement of the light, they were driving very slowly. As they drew close I heard the engine stop. Two doors slammed. Then I heard voices.

“Yeah, this is it. It’s his.”

Again, the sound of car doors opening and closing. They had found my BMW. I touched E.J.’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Shh,” I hissed to him. “We’ve got to be very quiet.” I felt his muscles tense under my hand.

I could hear them moving around up on the road, and I could distinguish snatches of their conversation.

“… can’t be far… Yeah, well, which side? Let’s stick together.”

E.J. pressed himself against me. I suspected he recognized those voices.

“Let’s go down and look,” said one.

“There’s a river down there, for Christ’s sake. They wouldn’t go down there.”

“We’ve got to check it out anyway. C’mon.”

I leaned close to E.J. “We’ll have to cross the river,” I whispered. “It’s not too deep here. Just hold tight to my hand and follow along. Okay?”

His hand found mine and grasped it firmly. “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “We’ll be all right. Let’s go.”

From above us came the crackle of underbrush. The flashlight flickered through the trees, slowly coming closer. E.J. and I stepped into the water. The river was fed from the coldest water at the bottom of the dam. It immediately numbed my feet and ankles, and even though it was at its normal level, it sucked and pulled with surprising force.

The riverbed was strewn with big boulders. As we approached one, my foot abruptly sank into a hole which the water had gouged into the bottom as it swirled around the big rock. I stood in the eddy behind the boulder in water nearly up to my hips and drew E.J. close to me. The water came to his armpits.

“It gets shallower again,” I whispered. “Don’t worry.”

We moved forward, and the water was again at my knees. I glanced over my shoulder. The light had advanced halfway down the embankment. We had to get across the river before they arrived at the bank, or we’d be sitting mallards in the middle of the river. The rock-paved bottom was slick with algae and moss over smooth gravel, and once I slipped and had to scramble to regain my balance. E.J. struggled against the swift current that came to his waist. It was frustratingly slow going. We came to another boulder. I sank to the middle of my chest in the hole beside it. Before I could warn him, E.J.’s head slipped under. I grabbed him under his armpits and hoisted him up. “Ahh!” he sputtered.

“What was that?”

The light played through the trees onto the water, flickering on and off like a strobe as it found openings through the foliage. I could see that we still had thirty feet to go before we reached the sanctuary of the far shore, and the two men with the light had already nearly reached the water’s edge. I knew we wouldn’t make it.

“I heard something,” said one of the voices.

“Goddam owl or something.”

“Like hell. That was them. They’re down here somewhere.”