Taking Off (13 page)

“It's like those maps,” I said, “the ones in the atlas that show the products for every state, with little cars scattered over Detroit and South Bend and wheels of cheese all over Wisconsin.” A map like that had taken shape in my mind, a map of Majestic Salvage and Wrecking that had replaced my original impression of chaos with a neat overhead view, with little wrecked cars in one region, little broken stoves in another.

“We're there,” he said. He stopped. I stopped.

We were standing in an area that at first seemed not to be distinguished in any way from any of the other areas, but then, gradually, I began to be able to see that we were surrounded by lean creatures standing frozen like a herd of the metal deer that people bought to decorate their front lawns. I put my hand out and felt the rack of one, the flank of another.

“Motorcycles,” I said, with the reverence of a naturalist.

“Motorcycles,” Raskol said in confirmation.

We began prowling among them, running our hands over them, bending close to peer at their mechanics, giving them a shake now and then to see what was loose. As I moved among them, I began to feel like a battlefield medic, one of the skinny, ill-trained, well-meaning kids I'd seen in so many war movies at the Babbington Theater. Most of the motorcycles that I examined in the dark felt like hopeless cases, calling into question the precepts of the Doctrine of Perpetual Utility and making me feel that I should call for one of the grizzled, wise, infinitely compassionate battlefield padres I'd seen in the same war movies.

With thoughts of war and death and movies in my mind, I was hardly surprised to hear a deep and rumbling voice from somewhere in the mysterious darkness ask, “How you planning to get one of those 'cross the fence?”

I remember seeing in
Impractical Craftsman
an article that told how to make a power saw out of an engine block …

Chapter 28

I, Sven

RASKOL AND I turned toward each other. There was a moment when each of us thought that the other had asked the question, but that error lasted only a moment. The voice still seemed to rumble in the yard, deeper and older than either of us could have managed if we had affected a tone meant to rattle the other.

My first thought was to run, but my legs would not respond to the order. Apparently they did not agree that running was the right strategy. I looked at them, astonished that they should disobey me in such a comical manner, behaving, as they were, like the legs of a frightened boy in an animated cartoon.

To my further astonishment, Raskol answered the question, while swiveling his head to try to find its source. “We're going to fly one out,” he said. “Like Icarus and Dædalus.”

“That stunt didn't work none too well, as I recall,” said the voice. Resurrecting that voice from Majestic Salvage and Wrecking now, I hear in it something that I did not hear then. I hear in its dark depth of sound a measure of concern for our safety, a certain quality that tends toward a plea. It's not a matter of pitch or volume so much as a timbre, a tenseness in the vocal cords, perhaps. A timbre like that came into my mother's voice when she cautioned me about the dangers of snorkeling or dating. At the time, in the salvage yard, I didn't hear it. I heard only the threat of capture, interrogation, trial, sentencing, imprisonment, durance vile, and physical harm of some kind—unspecified and therefore as horrible as I could imagine. “Icarus crashed, you know,” the voice added, and if I'd known how to hear it, I would have detected something like regret.

“We're not going to crash,” said Raskol. “We've got plans. From a magazine.”

“Hmm,” said the voice. “Plans. Let's see 'em.”

“I don't think we've got them with us,” said Raskol. “Have you got the plans, Peter?”

My voice had allied itself with my legs in a policy of passive resistance. I wanted to speak—not as much as I wanted to run, but I did want to speak, since Raskol seemed to be having some success with speaking as a tactic, if only a delaying tactic. I may have been inhibited by the formula I had heard so often in cop movies: “Anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

“Peter?” Raskol prodded.

“Wahuhih,” I said, though I may be misspelling that.

“You Danish?” asked the voice.

“Nuühahnah,” I said, approximately.

“Norwegian?” asked the voice.

“Swedish,” said Raskol.

“Don't he speak no English?”

“Ooka hap-pa nih ka heppa wah Eng-leesh, Sven?” Raskol asked me with exaggerated enunciation.

“Heppa wah Eng-leesh,” I said, and found that I had regained my voice. “Are you going to arrest us?” I asked, with an attempt at a Swedish accent.

The shape in the dark began to rumble good-naturedly. I wouldn't call it laughing, but there was a jovial quality to it. “That's a good one,” the voice said. “Me on the lam, and you asking if I'm going to arrest you.”

“You're on the lam?” I said, more thrilled than I can tell. This was wonderful news. We were within the limits of the town of Babbington, although we were outside the village of Babbington, so I was quite specifically right there in my own home town, and I was consorting with someone who was on the lam. I felt, and I was thrilled to feel, like one of the innocent people in movies whose humdrum lives were interrupted and enlivened by their being mistaken for crooks or murderers and driven by mistaken identity into fleeing the cops. It made my town a much richer place than it had been just a few minutes ago. I wondered if he was carrying a gat. “Have you got a gat?” I asked.

“A gat?”

“A rod. A heater.”

“You've been watching too many American movies, Sven.”

“I take it you're not employed by Majestic Salvage and Wrecking,” said Raskol.

“Ain't employed by nobody.”

“You're not the night watchman?”

“Not the chief of police, neither. Just a resident.”

“A resident?”

“That's right. I live here.”

“Here?” I said. “In the junkyard?”

“It may be a junkyard to you, but it's home to me.”

“Of course,” I said. “I'm sorry. I—”

“I got it made in the shade, Sven. Most of what I need I got right here in the yard. Prowl around this place long enough, you find all the comforts of home. I got a nice little place carved out of a couple of cars at the bottom of the heap over there. Hidden. You'd never find your way to it. Not a chance. Got a nice sofa, coffee table, refrigerator. The only thing I don't find here is my domestic items and consumables. Food and drink. Soap. Linens. Sundry items of that sort. But that stuff's easy to steal outside. I make my little forays over the fence, come back with my provisions. Even the dog don't bother me much. He's got so's he's used to me. Not that we exactly get along. Don't neither of us trust the other much. Sometimes I get the feeling that he's not going to let me back in after one of my shopping sprees. You got him good with that meat you threw him, though. Did you kill him?”

“No,” said Raskol. “Just put him to sleep for the night.”

“I'd like to have that recipe, if you don't mind.”

“It's my sister's secret, but I think I can get you a little bottle of the active ingredient.”

“Much obliged. Now about that motorcycle you're after.”

“I don't think any one of them is going to do the trick,” said Raskol.

“They are in pretty bad shape.”

“I think we need the working parts of a few of them,” I said.

“Plenty of tools available, and I'm pretty handy. When we got 'em dismantled, we can just heave the pieces over the fence.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That's a great idea. Let's—”

“Let's negotiate a price.”

“A price?”

“That's what I said.”

“But they're not yours,” I objected.

The big presence rumbled again. If the rumble was laughter, it was laughter that said that the issue of ownership was no laughing matter.

“How much have you got on you?” Raskol asked in a murmur.

“A couple of dollars,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“You think he'll go for that?”

“We can ask.”

“We've got four dollars,” Raskol said in the direction of the presence.

“In all the world?” the presence rumbled.

“Four dollars and the knockout drops,” said Raskol.

“I thought you had to get those drops from your sister.”

“I do. I'll bring them tomorrow.”

“Oh. I see. You'll give me four dollars now, and we'll dismantle the motorcycles, salvage the parts you need, and toss them over the fence. Then you'll make your exit from here, go round the fence, load the parts into that truck with the bad shocks, and drive off, and tomorrow night you'll come back and bring me a little vial of those knockout drops.”

“That's the plan,” Raskol said hopefully.

“And it sounds like a good plan to me,” said the presence, “but—”

He paused. Reflecting on the episode now, reliving it, I recognize the pause for what it was: a deliberate pause, a pause for effect, and it had its intended effect. Raskol and I stood still, waiting for what was to follow, and when, after a while, nothing did, Raskol asked what the presence intended us to ask: “‘But' what?”

“You're going to have to leave the Swedish meatball as a hostage.”

The word
hostage
had a powerful incantatory effect on my recalcitrant legs. On
hos
I felt energy rush through me, as if the effect of adrenaline were an electric force, and when I heard
tage
the syllable struck me like a jockey's whip. The spell of immobility was broken and I was off, as they say, like a shot.

I ran headlong through the dark, trying to pick my way among the items awaiting salvage, and doing the sort of job you would expect a frightened kid to do in the dark: banging my knees, stumbling, falling, running in blind haste and fear. Raskol was right beside me, so I felt no shame in running, and from the way his breath was coming in bursts and gasps, I felt no shame in being afraid, either. Behind us, we heard the rumbling laughter of the presence, diminishing with distance, and if we had taken a moment to consider what we heard, we would have realized that he wasn't pursuing us and we would probably have concluded that he had been amusing himself at our expense and that he had no intention of putting himself to the trouble of running after us. Instead, we just kept running, stumbling, falling, picking ourselves up, and running again, until we reached the front gate, where Cerberus lay still and sleeping, scrambled over the fence, got into the truck, and drove off, spinning the tires, spraying gravel.

Chapter 29

In Which My Conscience Makes an Appearance

ALBERTINE AND I had given ourselves a brief vacation, a getaway on the weekend of my birthday. We had taken the train to Montauk, at the tip of the south fork of the east end of Long Island, and then the ferry to East Phantom, the largest of the islands in the Phantom Archipelago that stretches from Montauk to Block Island. Autumn offered off-season rates; a night in an inn would be cheap. The sun was weak, but the day was calm. We unfolded our tricky beach chairs and installed their canvas seats. We sat, bundled, enjoying the sun, reading, like inmates at an alpine sanatorium.

In preparation for the writing of this book, I was reading the first volume of my memoirs,
Little Follies.
I hadn't read it in years.

“Is that any good?” Al asked.

“Not as bad as I feared,” I said. “I made some mistakes about my schoolmates, especially the one I call Spike—and some about Raskol, too, for that matter—and I seem to have gotten confused about Porky White's age and when he went to high school. Maybe I've never really known his age. Maybe he was chasing the girls at Babbington High at an age when I, the naïve I who wrote this, didn't expect him to be pursuing high school girls, well after he and my mother graduated, even after I was born.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” she said.

“Now that I think about it, that's when he was driving a school bus and working at his father's bar at night.”

“As I recall, there are lots of high school girls on school buses.”

“Sure. That would explain it—well enough.”

“You don't sound convinced. Would you like to stop in Babbington on the way back to the city—walk around—make a few discreet inquiries—take some mental notes—get a bowl of chowder—some fried clams?”

“No,” I said, “but thanks for suggesting it.” Then, after a pause: “Maybe.” And then, after another pause: “We'll see.”

We went back to our books. After a while I put my finger in the pages of
Little Follies
to mark my place and closed my eyes. I dozed. I had a few minutes of excellent sleep, one of those catnaps that leave me refreshed in a way that an entire night's sleep never does. When I woke, I turned my head toward Albertine, smiling with the pleasure of the sleep I'd had, and found her turning her head toward me, smiling with the pleasure of her own sunny autumn doze.