Graveyard Plots (23 page)

This particular Saturday was a fine late-spring day, not too hot, not too breezy, with the scent of wildflowers and the first dusty hint of summer in the air. We had the main double doors open wide, and all the windows raised, so we could breathe that air and watch the townspeople passing by in the sunshine outside. We weren't doing much except talking; it was too nice a day to concentrate on card playing.

The conversation got around to vacations when Aaron Cubbage, who owns the drugstore, said something about weather like this making him itch-for-a-fishing-pole and a spot under one of the, oaks at Lake Keystone. He went up to the lake for a couple of weeks
every summer with a crony of his from the county seat and spent the whole time fishing for blue gills and drinking wine coolers; he'd been doing that for thirty years and he'd keep on doing it until he died.

The rest of us varied our vacations, though. Ernie Boone said he and the missus planned to close up their hardware store on the Fourth of July and take a trip through the Ozark Mountains. If his mother-in-law insisted on going along, he said, he'd keep driving until he found somebody to trade her to for a jug of mountain dew—which got a pretty good laugh. Doc Pollard, Cedarville's only dentist, said he was thinking about taking one of those nostalgic paddlewheel steamboat trips down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. I said that if the town could get along without the Holloway Floral and Gardening Service for three weeks, I was going to pack up my camper and drive over and up into Colorado. I'd never seen the Sangre de Cristo range, or any other part of that state, and I like to visit new places every year.

Webb Patterson, who doubled as Cedarville's lawyer and notary public, was the only one who didn't volunteer any information about his vacation plans. Not that his reticence was surprising; Webb had been a quiet and sort of private fellow for as long as I'd known him, which was since he'd moved to Cedarville from downstate four years ago. Not secretive, just private. Like the rest of us, he seemed pretty much content with the kind of quiet small-town life he led; but unlike the rest of us, he never talked about getting away for a while in the summer, seeing other parts of the state or country. Yet he always left town for two weeks in July or August, and he'd admitted to a visit to Mexico last year.

It was Doc Pollard who asked him straight out what he was planning to do this summer. At first Webb didn't answer. But the rest of us were looking at him, waiting, and finally he said in a reluctant voice, "I'm going to New York."

"New York City, you mean?" Doc asked.

"Yes."

"Never had any urge to go to New York myself," Aaron said. "I don't like big cities—too much noise and hubbub. And too much crime. Why, I heard they mug you right on the downtown streets in Manhattan."

Webb smiled at that, a funny sort of smile. "I'm sure that's an exaggeration."

"Maybe so, but I'll take my vacation at Lake Keystone, thank you."

I said, "You going to stay in New York the whole two weeks, Webb?"

"Yes, probably."

"What's there to do all that time? I mean, you can visit the Empire State Building and the United Nations and take in all the other sights in three or four days—a week at the most."

"There are other things I plan to do."

"Mind saying what they are?"

He hesitated. "Well . . . walking in Central Park, for one."

"That doesn't sound like much of an interesting vacation," Ernie said, "walking around Central Park all day."

Webb hesitated again, longer this time. Then in an impulsive way, as if he had something inside him that needed to come out, he said, "Not all day, Ernie."

"Well, part of it, then."

"Not during the day at all. At night."

Ernie looked startled. "At night? Hey, you're not serious, are you? Central Park's supposed to be full of muggers at night."

"I'm sure it is," Webb said. "That's the idea."

"What idea?"

"The danger. Danger's the whole purpose of my vacation."

We were all staring at him—and in a different way now, like maybe we didn't know him as well as we thought we did. He was dead serious, you could see that; he wasn't trying to pull our legs.

"Now wait a minute," I said."You mean you're fixing to walk around Central Park at night
hoping
you'll meet up with a mugger?"

"No. Hoping I won't meet one."

Aaron said, "That doesn't make any sense."

"It does if you look at it a certain way," Webb said. "It's like a game, a dangerous game where you stack the odds against yourself and then try to beat them."

"Why in hell would you want to play such a game?"

"For the danger, the excitement."

"But you could get yourself
killed
!"

"I know. Personal risk is what the game is all about."

"This is crazy," Ernie said. He scooted his chair back a little way, as if he were afraid Webb might start foaming at the mouth and try to attack him; Ernie always did have a tendency to overreact. "This is the craziest damn thing I ever heard."

Webb sighed and seemed to stare for a time at the movement of dust motes in a shaft of sunlight. "I shouldn't have told you," he said finally. "I should have known better than to tell anyone."

"It doesn't change anything," I said. "Why should it? We're still your friends."

"But you don't understand or approve, I can see that."

"Give us a little time for it to sink in."

"And some more explanation," Doc said. "What made you all of a sudden decide on this game of yours?"

"I didn't decide all of a sudden. I decided it was how I would spend my vacations nine years ago, after my wife passed away."

"Nine years ago?" Aaron said. "My God, you mean you been going to places like New York, challenging muggers, every summer
for nine years
?"

"No, of course not. I choose a different kind of danger each year. Last summer I went backpacking alone in northern Mexico, in rugged country where there are supposed to be bandits. Two years ago I hunted wild boar with a bow and arrow up in Canada. Three years ago I rode a kayak down the Colorado River. Before it was shark-hunting in the Atlantic and some tamer things such as mountain climbing and motorcycle racing."

I said, "Each year, you do something a little more dangerous than the past year, is that it?"

"Yes."

Doc was incredulous. "And you survived all those things without getting hurt?"

"I survived them, yes," Webb said, "but I've been hurt a few times. A rattlesnake bit me on the leg in Mexico last summer; I almost drowned twice in the Colorado River; I broke an arm and fractured my pelvis mountain climbing in Arizona the year before I moved here."

"Crazy," Ernie muttered again. "Just plain crazy."

Webb gave him a tolerant glance. "Not from where I sit," he said. "Risking my life for two weeks every summer is what makes living worthwhile."

"I don't follow that," Aaron said.

"It's simple, really. I was born and raised in a town not much larger than Cedarville and I've never lived anywhere other than a small town; I like the quiet, slow-paced existence. But after my wife died, life didn't seem to mean much to me anymore; for the first time I was
aware
of how dull and unexciting it was. And that feeling got even worse when the time came for me to plan my first vacation alone in twenty years. Where was I going to go? What was I going to do?

"Well, that started me thinking about the whole idea of a vacation. Most people, particularly in the big cities, lead hectic lives—exciting lives in the sense that they're always doing rush-about things, facing little dangers and crises every day that build up a considerable pressure after a while. A vacation for them is two or three quiet and unexciting weeks, a time to relax and unwind so they can go back to their normal lifestyle with recharged batteries. But for me, I realized, it was just the opposite. I lived fifty quiet and unexciting weeks-and-what-I—needed to recharge
my
batteries was two weeks of excitement and physical danger."

"So that's how it is," I said. "And it works for you, this kind of vacation?"

"Oh, yes. I've never felt more alive than I have these past nine years."

"But you keep doing more and more dangerous things every year," Aaron said. "Hell, man, the odds are bound to catch up with you sooner or later. And when they do you might not come home from one of your vacations."

Webb said quietly, "Don't you think I know that? But it doesn't matter. This is the only way I can live my life now and be happy and fulfilled. When my luck runs out and my time comes, I won't have any regrets."

None of us seemed to have anything more to say after that and there was one of those long uneasy silences where everybody is wrapped up in his own thoughts. Outside there were traffic sounds and the whoop of kids playing baseball in the park behind the firehouse; but inside the hush was so heavy the air might have been muffled in wool. You could almost hear the flies walking across the sun-streaked card table.

It was Webb who broke the silence. He scraped back his chair and stood up with a kind of rueful smile lifting the corners of his mouth. "I guess I'd best be going," he said. "I've got some law work to catch up on at home."

He didn't have any work to catch up on; he never worked on weekends, or brought business home from the office. I said, "Can't it wait, Webb? I'll walk over to Beebe's Store and buy us a six-pack—a cold beer'd go good in this weather."

"No, Roy, thanks. I'd better go."

He nodded to us, turned past old Number 4, Cedarville's lone fire engine, and went out into the sunshine. We all watched him until he was out of sight, not saying anything. But it was a different kind of silence now, no longer heavy, as if a kind of tension had been broken. At length Ernie said, "Well, what in hell do you think of that? What in
hell
do you think of that?"

"Not much," I said. "A man's entitled to do what he pleases on his vacation, isn't he?"

"But challenging muggers," Aaron said, "risking his life for kicks—"

"He doesn't do it for kicks, Ernie."

"Well, that's what I call it."

Doc said, "Maybe he doesn't do it for kicks and maybe he's got every right to do it no matter what. But I'll tell you this: I wish he hadn't told us about it."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't help but feel different towards him now. He's still my friend, I don't mean that; but I just don't feel the same, knowing about these vacations of his." Doc shook his head and smacked the card table with his palm. "Damn, it would have been better for all of us if he'd kept his mouth shut."

"You're right about that, Doc," I said with some tartness. "A man's always better off to keep his private business to himself, if he doesn't want to be misunderstood or poorly thought of."

L
ater that day, after I got home from the firehouse, I laid out my road maps of Kansas and Colorado and studied the route I had traced out for my own vacation next month. I still wasn't sure of where I would stop in Colorado, but I'd circled four towns near the southern section of the Sangre de Cristo range that looked to have good state and county road connections. At least one of them, though, would be large enough to support a bank.

That was what I'd definitely decided on for this year: a bank in Colorado.

It was a matter of progression, just as it was with Webb. I'd started with a gas station in Minnesota five years ago and worked my way up through a liquor store in Iowa, a mercantile establishment in South Dakota, a supermarket in Nebraska, and a finance company in Kansas. So this year it just
had
to be a bank in Colorado.

Of course, that made next year's vacation problematical; a bank is just about the limit one man alone can handle. But then, there was no use worrying about next summer until after this one was history. Besides which, I had a notion it was about time to shift gears anyway, to try something new. I'd been doing some reading on Yellow Kid Weil, the Sanctimonious Kid, and other legendary confidence men; maybe I'd try something in their line. Not over in Europe or any place like that, though. There were still plenty of places I'd never visited in this country, still plenty of things to do right here.

Like they say, "See America First."

I thought again about Webb—what a coincidence it was, considering the size of Cedarville, for one of my friends and neighbors to have developed a philosophy so similar to my own. Or was it really such a coincidence at that? After all, there had to be thousands of fellows living quiet, unexciting lives in hundreds of other small towns from coast to coast. Could be, couldn't it, that there were quite a few of us who spent our summer vacations doing all sorts of unconventional and dangerous things?

It was sure something to wonder about . . .

I
t was Sam McCullough who found the hanging man, down on the river bank behind his livery stable.

Straightaway he went looking for Ed Bozeman and me, being as we were the local sheriff's deputies. Tule River didn't have any full-time law officers back then, in the late 1890s; just volunteers like Boze and me to keep the peace, and a fat-bottomed sheriff who came through from the county seat two or three days a month to look things over and to stuff himself on pig's knuckles at the Germany Café.