Taking Off (14 page)

“We ought to learn to live in the Spanish manner,” I said. “We'd be good at it.”

“Mmmm,” she said, relishing the thought. “A big meal in the afternoon, then sex and a siesta—”

“—then back to work till sometime in the evening—”

“—dinner at eleven and dancing till dawn.”

“What time is it now?”

She raised herself on her elbows and looked to the west, where the sun was reddening at the edge of the ocean.

“Cocktail time,” she said.

*   *   *

AT THE BAR, with a martini in hand, she grinned at me and asked, “Were you really going to steal the parts for the aerocycle?”

“I? Steal? Parts?” I asked. “How can you think that?”

“I was taken in,” she said. “Are you shocked?”

“Not shocked exactly.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yes. I've certainly never thought of you as someone who thought of me as a thief.”

“Sometimes I like to think of you as a lovable rogue.”

“Me, too!” I said, arching an eyebrow in the continental manner. “A gentleman bandit, like John Robie?”

She narrowed her eyes and studied me. “No,” she said. “I guess not.”

I sighed, dismissing with a Gallic shrug another childish fantasy. “The truth is that, at the time, I accepted the idea of the midnight discount.”

“Oh, Peter.”

“I was a kid with a dream and no money to make it come true.”

“And the midnight discount was an accepted thing among your cohort?”

“I guess it was—at least among a certain subset of my cohort.”

“I think it was just a little newspeak to mask the fact of theft.”

“You were never a teenage boy.”

“That's one of my fondest memories of my teen years.”

“Let's remind ourselves that I didn't actually steal anything.”

“Only because you were run off by the Monster of Majestic Salvage and Wrecking.”

“By my conscience, you mean.”

“That was the monster?”

“Wasn't it?”

“I don't know. Was it?”

“Maybe,” I said mysteriously, in the manner of a raffish rogue.

“Maybe?”

“I think that the truth was something like this: I may have anticipated that if we had gone ahead with the plan to steal the motorcycle parts, then, later, at some unpredictable time, perhaps while I was on the road, making my way westward, on a dark and lonely night, a large and threatening presence would appear to me and suggest that I had better own up to my crime and make some restitution … or else.”

“I wonder if you are the last man alive with such a fearsome conscience,” she said, musing.

Chapter 30

A Worthy Cause

THE NEXT MORNING Raskol and I met at Cap'n Leech's hovel before returning to Majestic Salvage and Wrecking as legitimate customers. Cap'n Leech had once owned a boatyard on the estuarial stretch of the Bolotomy River, not far upstream from the Lodkochnikov house. The boatyard now belonged to his son, Raoul, who had put his father out to pasture in a hovel built from a kit, a temporary shelter that was meant to be a storage shed, a garage for a second car, or a place within which the backyard tinkerer could work in bad weather, but never a home. Because Raoul recognized that he had not provided for his father the comfortable old age that the honored ancestor deserved, Raoul gave the Cap'n some cash now and then. It was conscience money. Raoul may have discovered that from time to time, particularly on dark and lonely nights, a large and threatening presence appeared to him and suggested that he'd better take a few bills to the old man, or else. The Cap'n had no real need for this money. When he gave the boatyard to Raoul, he hadn't expected a pension; he had expected a deep and abiding gratitude for the gift, and for the lifetime of work that had gone into building the boatyard into a business that Raoul could run and enjoy. Specifically, he had expected that he would be given some sinecure there that allowed him a place where he could sit and smoke and spit and shoot the shit with his cronies, happy in the atmosphere of motor oil and bottom paint and varnish that he had known for so long, but without the burden of work. That was what he had wanted, but that was not at all what Raoul had wanted. Raoul had feared that his father, if allowed to remain within the boatyard, would have remained the badgering presence that he had been throughout Raoul's childhood and youth, always demanding, always finding fault, always belittling, but now with the additional expectation of gratitude. So Raoul banished the Cap'n from the boatyard, on pain of anger and ridicule if he should dare to return. In his hovel, the old man smoldered with resentment. He accepted Raoul's conscience money but refused to spend it. Friends brought him what he needed, and Raskol was one of the most loyal of these. The Cap'n stuffed the cash in burlap sacks and used the sacks as seating. He had often said to Raskol, sometimes in my presence, that if Raskol ever needed money “for a worthy cause,” they could always dip into his furniture.

“Good morning, Cap'n,” Raskol called, standing at the closed door of the hovel.

The door swung open.

“Young Master Lodkochnikov—and young Master Leroy.”

“I brought you an egg sandwich and a snapshot of my sister,” said Raskol.

“I brought you a Coffee-Toffee,” I said.

“What's that?” he asked.

“It's soda.”

He examined the bottle as if he had never seen a bottle of Coffee-Toffee before, though that seemed unlikely to me because Coffee-Toffee was the most popular soft drink in that time and place, and there were Coffee-Toffee vending machines all over town.

“Have you no sister?” he asked.

“No, Cap'n,” I said. “We've been through that before.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” he wheezed. “I remember now.”

“You were checking on me, weren't you?”

He let slip his reedy, wheezing laugh, “hee-hee-hee,” and gave me a playful whack with his cane. “I was!” he said, as if he'd done something extraordinarily clever. “You'd be amazed how many people come here and tell me lies.” He drew us toward him, clutched our arms with his bony hands, and leaned inward to ensure that no eavesdropper would hear. “They all want to get the stuffing!” he said, and then released the reedy laugh again.

“That's why we're here,” said Raskol.

The Cap'n's eyes popped suddenly and spectacularly, as if Raskol had wrapped him in a bear hug and squeezed. “‘Et tu, Brute?'” he gasped.

“You always told me that if I needed money—”

“For a worthy cause!” he cried, swinging the cane in an arc that made us duck. “For a worthy cause! Only for a worthy cause!”

“It is for a worthy cause!” shouted Raskol.

The Cap'n had tired himself. He sank to one of the burlap sacks. He stabbed his finger in the direction of the egg sandwich, and Raskol gave it to him. I gave him the Coffee-Toffee bottle, and he opened it with the beer-can opener that he wore as an amulet on a leather thong around his neck. He refreshed himself with a couple of bites of the sandwich and a long pull at the soda.

“I wasn't expecting any worthy causes until after I was dead,” he said, almost tearily. “After that,” he added, swiveling his head to survey his domain and ending with his eyes fixed on Raskol's, “all this will be yours.” I think my jaw dropped at that revelation; if it is true that people's jaws do drop when they hear startling revelations, then mine must certainly have dropped then; the Cap'n had no mirrors, so I couldn't check, and cannot check in recollection now, since memory refuses to supply the Cap'n with any mirrors, but I think that my jaw dropped, and I gaped. “All yours when I'm gone,” he said, “but for now, I'd prefer to keep it myself. I've kind of gotten used to having it around.” He squeezed the sack that he was sitting on, and it crinkled internally. “I suppose your mother is in desperate need of a costly operation?”

“No—” said Raskol.

“The bank is threatening to foreclose on the family shack?”

“No—”

“Your sister has to—ah—preserve what's left of her reputation?”

“No,” said Raskol. “It's for Peter.”

The Cap'n looked at me, studying me, trying to decide why I might need to dip into his furniture. After consideration, he said, “Up to your eyeballs in debt, are you?”

“No,” I said, chuckling, little realizing how accurately the Cap'n had predicted the balance sheet for most of the years of my adult life.

“It's for his education,” said Raskol. “He's been accepted at the prestigious Faustroll Institute in New Mexico, and he—”

“Pfweh,” said the Cap'n dismissively.

“—has to build an airplane to get there.”

“What?” the old man said, directing the question at me.

“I'm going to build it out of parts of surplus—I mean wrecked—motorcycles,” I said. “I've got plans.”

“Damn,” he said, and this time he definitely did have a tear in his eye. “Damn.”

“What's the matter?” I asked.

Shaking his head slowly, he said, “That is a worthy cause—damn it.”

Chapter 31

El Patrón's Revenge

BECAUSE RASKOL HADN'T yet developed the skill to borrow the family truck in broad daylight, we hitchhiked to Majestic Salvage and Wrecking. While we were standing beside the road with our thumbs out and our pockets stuffed with the crumpled bills we'd extracted from Cap'n Leech's furniture, waiting for an obliging motorist to come by, I said, “Holy mackerel, Raskol, you're going to be rich!” summing up in those few words the surprise and awe that had been inspired within me by the Cap'n's revelation about his intended disposition of those comfy sacks of cash.

I recognized, even as I said it, that I also felt a bit of disappointment. There was the possibility that I wouldn't be around to see Raskol come into his inheritance. Just when I had found a way to get out of Babbington, if only for a summer, the town had begun to reveal depths hitherto unrevealed. Here was my best friend secretly tapped as the inheritor of wads of folding money, wealth beyond anything his family or mine had ever known. He was going to need a pal to help him haul the sacks away when the Cap'n kicked the bucket, and I might not be around to be that pal. I might be in distant New Mexico.

“Rich,” he said. “Yeah—but not for long.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I know what I'm supposed to do with the money. It comes with an obligation.”

This was getting better and better.

“What's the obligation?”

“I'm required to use the money to bring Raoul to his knees. Drive him out of business. Start a small boatyard of my own. Undercut him on every piece of nautical gear and every boatyard service. And when he's on the edge of bankruptcy, deep in debt and desperate for cash, buy him out for a fraction of what the place is worth, make him an offer he can't refuse, a very specific offer.”

“What's that?”

“A small annuity and lifetime tenancy in the hovel he built for his father.”

“Wow,” I said. “You're an agent of justice—more than that—you're an avenging angel!”

“I'm no angel,” he said with a practiced sneer.

“This could be a western,” I said, thrilled beyond the telling. “Instead of a boatyard, Cap'n Leech—but he wouldn't be a captain, of course, not in a western—instead of a boatyard, he'd have a ranch, a huge ranch—”

A car stopped for us, and we got in.

“Where are you going, boys?” asked the driver. It was Mr. MacPherson.

“Majestic Salvage and Wrecking,” I said. “Thanks for picking us up, Mr. MacPherson.”

“Glad to be of service,” he said. “I can drop you off on the other side of the tracks.”

“That's fine,” said Raskol. “Thanks.”

“The Cap'n,” I resumed, “or whatever you call a guy who owns a ranch—”

I paused. I expected Mr. MacPherson to supply the word.

“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “I don't think there is a specific word, other than
rancher,
which could loosely be applied to anyone engaged in the business of ranching, whether he was the head of the operation or not, but I suppose that you are looking for something more comparable to
captain
than to
shipping magnate,
so in this case, assuming that the ranch is in the Southwest, you might call him the
patrón,
or even El Patrón.”

“Thanks. El Patrón has acres and acres, stretching across the High Plains, and he has spent the best years of his life turning his ranch into the finest spread west of the Mississippi, with the best beef cattle west of the—um—Mississippi. Years earlier he had graduated from Harvard, with a law degree, but found that the cities of the East were too confining to accommodate the breadth of his dreams and ambitions, so he came out west and settled in Dry Gulch. There he met and fell in love with a young schoolmarm, Miss Clementine, who had come west after graduating from the Baltimore Normal School, her heart afire with a mission to educate and civilize the wild offspring of the other pioneers and homesteaders, bringing with her the beginnings of the finest library west of the—ah—Monongahela. Sadly, after their storybook marriage, she died in childbirth, and the Cap'n—El Patrón—was left with nothing but the dry earth and his cattle and his infant son, Raoul. From the start, Raoul was a problem child. He was stubborn and rebellious and—uhh—pusillanimous.”

“Bellicose,” said the driver, since he was, after all, Mr. MacPherson.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Not pusillanimous. Bellicose. He was bellicose, and El Patrón had to rescue him from one scrape after another. Finally, the boy came of age. The old Patrón took him to the porch of the grand house that had grown from the humble shack that he had originally built, put his hand on his boy's shoulder and said, ‘Raoul, today you have become a man, and today you have become a landowner.' Looking out over the vast expanse of Rancho Grande, he said, ‘All this is yours, my boy.' He unfurled a deed, a simple document but handsomely engraved and properly signed and sealed, and handed it to his troublesome son. It was a touching ceremony that El Patrón had devised during the long nights when he rode his favorite horse, Thunderclap, through the darkness and into the dawn trying to rid himself of the anger he felt toward his wayward boy and to escape the sorrow he felt over the loss of his darling Clementine, talking to her in the dark as he rode, seeking the advice that would help him tame the wild child. ‘Thanks, Dad,' sneered Raoul, and within days he had had his father's personal belongings moved from the ranch house to a tent on the driest and loneliest corner of the domain, where he left the old man to desiccation and despair. Meanwhile, Raoul, as good a rancher as his father and far sharper in his business dealings, grew ever richer at the expense of the other inhabitants of Dry Gulch. He controlled the bank, and he had the mayor and sheriff in his pocket. He bought up mortgages and foreclosed when it suited him to do so, ravishing the virgin daughters of his debtors whenever he got the chance. The whole town lived in fear of him, and it seemed that nothing could be done to rid them of this tyrannical cattle baron until one night, when thunder rocked the plains and lightning lit the sky with angry bolts, a stranger rode into town on a black stallion, seeking shelter from the storm. He found it in the miserable tent where the aged Patron dwelled, and in the dark, over coffee stretched to tastelessness with chicory, he listened to the old man's tale of woe and filial disrespect. ‘The deed I gave him contains a reversion clause,' he told the stranger. ‘I put it in there to try to cure him of his pusill—his bellicosity. It states that if Raoul is killed in a gunfight, a showdown, everything reverts to me.' The stranger nodded silently at this, put one strong gloved hand on El Patrón's shoulder, and said—”