The Last American Martyr (2 page)

Now that he was catching his breath, he studied
me
a bit more closely. As he assessed my face, he asked, “Have you got time for a beer, Jake Snow?”

Before the three of us filed into his trailer, I picked up Darius’ books and magazine from the deck. Once we were inside he asked me to have a seat, then went into the adjoining kitchen to pour Solace some fresh water and to fetch us two cold brews.

I'd been inside his trailer a few times before, when Norm Flagg was living in it. When Flagg was there the place was filthy and a shambles. Food-encrusted dishes were strewn everywhere like a scattered collection of drab, round frescoes. Soiled clothes were all over the thin carpet, dropped where they had been shed. Two pillows, gray with grime, laid to rest atop a worn and filthy sofa. The only things Flagg had on the paneled walls were a few naked center-folds from cheap girlie magazines and a one-eyed deer head that looked like it had been through one too many garage sales.

But now the place was much different. The furnishings were again sparse and inexpensive, but everything was immaculate. The second thing to hit me when I walked in this time was Darius' books. Three of the living room walls were lined with hip-high, shelves full of them. On the back wall, beneath a window looking into the forest where Darius had almost bought it minutes earlier, were two blue recliners. A table and lamp sat between them. On the table were an empty ashtray and a well-worn, hardcover copy of “A People's History of the United States.” Though I'd never heard of the book before, I had delivered to the White Pine Library copies of Publisher's Weekly, like the ones neatly stacked beneath the table.

As I peered around the room some more, I noticed something else. Hanging just to the right of the front window was a thin-framed photograph of a very attractive young lady. Dressed like they did back in the 1960's, she had long, sleek, black hair, parted in the middle. Her face was one to die for. Next to that photograph, in a much larger frame, was the front page of a newspaper. There was a picture on that too, a large one. From where I sat, across the narrow room, it looked like Darius, shaking hands with another man.

I got up out of the chair, went over to it, and took a closer look. It was Darius alright, on the front page of the New York Times. Dressed in a suit and tie, he was receiving an award.

Hearing the first beer can pop and fizz in the kitchen by now, feeling like a snoop, I quickly read the headline. It said, “Nobel Prize Goes to Controversial Author Thomas Soles.”

I’ll be a son of a gun! I thought. I knew he looked familiar!

Then I scurried back across the room and fell back into the recliner just as Darius McClure/Thomas Soles returned with two beers.

Chapter 2

“I hope Busch Light works for you.” he said, handing me an ice cold one.

“Sure ... sure, that's great,” I said, struggling to sound nonchalant. But that name, “Thomas Soles,” kept echoing inside my head along with a stream of questions.
What the hell is this all about? What's he doing here, in a tiny, isolated town like White Pine? Why's he using an alias? What—.

McClure/Soles sat down and lit a cigarette. Then he got right up again, turned on the ceiling fan just above us, and sat back down. He looked across the table between us and said, “Thanks again for saving my life, Jake. Another minute ... it would have been all over.”

I detected in his words a slight, time-worn, New York accent. Many years and miles had probably passed since its inception, but it was a dialect, and it would fit somebody named Thomas Soles far better than it would a Darius McClure.

“You're more than welcome, Mister McClure.” I said, feeling a little ridiculous calling him that now. “Anybody else would have done the same thing.”

“Yes ... maybe,” he said. Then he paused as if he was trying and failing to think of one person he knew who would have helped him.

“I don't believe in fate, destiny, or any of that bunk,” he went on, “but you happened along at the precise moment I was hanging on for my life. Heh, heh ... no pun intended.”

Only slightly creased at the corners, those blue eyes then lit up like a teenager's on prom night. Beneath the longish silver hair that obscured part of his forehead, I swear, those eyes talked. Looking back, knowing him as well as I do now, I realize they were saying, “I've seen most of what this world has to offer, Jake. There isn't much that has gotten by me. I’ve been alone for a long time now, and I’m eager to share what I've learned with someone like you. But for now, for this moment, I'm just damned glad you're here. I think you and I just might become friends, but I have to be careful … very careful. I'm sorry.”

“Mister McClure,” I said, “I don't want to cross any boundaries here, you know, sound disrespectful or anything, but you've got to be more careful next time. You're never supposed to fully extend a ladder, barely secure it thirty feet up then climb to the top.”

“I appreciate your concern,” he said, “and you're a hundred percent right. I don't have a whole hell of a lot of experience with such things.” He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray twice then went on. “You know ... most people, particularly folks my age, don't like to admit when they're wrong. Politics, religion, socio-economic views, it doesn't matter. Nobody wants to fess up to being wrong about anything anymore. Despite all my typical human shortcomings, I like to think I'm smarter than that. I sure
hope
I'm intelligent enough to know when I'm wrong and humble enough to admit it. Hell, the older
I
get, the more I realize how little I actually do know. There’s an awful lot of gray area in this business we call
life
. It's very unfortunate, Jake, but most people can’t see beyond the black or the white. They just can't seem to get past the perceptions they’ve cemented in their minds.”

At this point I began to wonder why this mysterious man was getting into such a heavy spiel. Yet at the same time, I welcomed his wise words. He didn't know me from Adam but, as he opened up to me, it somehow felt very natural. It seemed as if I had known him far longer than I actually had.

“I'm sorry for ranting,” he said, punching out his smoke. “I've been alone here for quite some time now.”

“You know, Mister McClure, it's really weird...”

“Please,” he interrupted, shaking his head and waving one hand as if he were dusting the air, “please, call me Darius.”

“OK ... Darius, sure. Like I was saying, it's really weird. Most of the folks here in White Pine, I’ve known all my life. Good people, for the most part. But I’ve known you, what, fifteen minutes, and here I am feeling as if I know you better than any of them. Is that crazy or what?”

He looked through the window straight in front of us, surveying the deep green pines and blue sky above. A small smile, a nostalgic smile, found its way to his mouth. Then he peered into his near empty beer can as if he were searching for the perfect response in there. After swishing the contents around once or twice he looked back at me.

“Funny you say that, Jake,” he said, still wearing that subtle smile, “because when I was a young man, back in New York during the late sixties and early seventies, my friends and I made a full-time job out of chasing the ladies. Whew! What a time that was to be young—the best. Anyway, in the course of seven, maybe eight years, we must have hit every club and disco from Manhattan to the Hamptons. OK, that's a stretch, but you get my drift. What I’m trying to say is I met an awful lot of girls in those places. And I can't
count
the times when, after talking to them for just ten minutes or so, they said almost the exact same thing you just did. You know, something like, this is weird, but I just met you and I feel like I've know you for a long time. Every time I heard that, it was music to my ears. I was a very fortunate young man to be able to communicate the way I did.”

With that his eyes fell again to the now empty can, and he said, “How about another, Jake?”

I checked my watch: three-thirty. Kyle, the postmaster and only other employee at our tiny White Pine Post Office, would be closing up in half an hour. But I didn’t want to leave quite yet. I had a key to the PO, and numerous times before I had let myself in and locked up when I left.

“Sure, I’ll have another. That would be great.” Then I pulled out my cell and said, “Just let me call the office, tell the head-honcho I’m going to be a bit late.”

“Go right ahead. I want to get Solace here a slice of raw carrot too. She loves them. Be right back.”

Just as I finished the call, Darius came back into the paneled room. He saw me looking in the direction of that framed newspaper. After glancing at the article himself, he hesitated for a split-second. Then he handed me one of the cold beers and sat back down. He lit another Carlton, took a swig of the beer, and said, “Well…I guess the proverbial cat is out of the bag now.”

Talk about getting caught with your mitts in the old cookie jar! I hadn’t the foggiest where this was going from here. I’d never felt so uncomfortable in my life. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I should get out of this chair, make up some bullshit excuse, tell him, Oh, I just remembered I have to blah, blah, blah, and then hit the bricks. I squirmed a few times, cleared my throat, and tried to hold onto one of the few ridiculous options racing through my mind. I don’t smoke, but I came damn close to asking him for a cigarette. I’d have done anything to fill those long, silent seconds.

But finally Thomas Soles, Nobel Prize laureate, broke the silence. With Solace the terrier now on his lap licking the bottom of his moist can, he turned to me and said, “Jake, from here on out, why don’t you just call me Tom?”

Chapter 3

“Sure…I can call you Tom.”

You have no idea how badly I wanted out of that trailer. I wished I was in my jeep, cannon-balling down Split Branch Road, bouncing off the inside roof. But what could I do? And in all honesty, how could I not be curious. It’s not every day you get the opportunity to sit down with a Nobel laureate, particularly such an enigmatic one.  

What Tom Soles said next, he said very slowly. I could tell he was weighing every word, trying them out inside his head before choosing just the right ones. Gently smoothing the tawny fur on Solace’s back, he said, “Jake, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to confide in anybody other than my publisher, and as rarely as I speak to her, it’s always on the telephone. I’m sixty-one years old now, and I don’t know how much time I have left. I’ve been on the run for a year and a half now—on the lam, if you will. I’ve had very few meaningful, face-to-face conversations in all that time.

He paused for a sip, and probably to get his next words right. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he was preparing to tell me. I had a wife and two sons. I didn’t want to get involved in anything I shouldn’t. He’d been on the run for a year and a half! From what? What could this possibly be leading to? I had no answers, yet something kept me from bowing out of the conversation. And it continued.

“After all my years on this planet, I’ve become a pretty fair judge of character, Jake. And my instincts tell me you’re a trustworthy person. That’s a rare attribute, nowadays. Plus, you just saved my life. That alone is a damn good reason for feeling a certain affinity towards someone. Anyway…believe me; I never dreamed I’d open up to someone I’ve only known for such a short time. As I said, I’m getting closer to the dirt. It’s very possible that I have far less time left than you might think. I desperately
need
to share my experiences and my fears, so here goes.”

Tom then turned and nodded at the Times’ article, “You know about the Nobel Prize, am I correct?”

“Well, yes, I saw the picture there and I was inquisitive. Ever since I started delivering your mail, I
thought
you looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place you. Of course, I’ve heard about you on the news and all.”

“Are you interested in knowing more?”

“Are you in some kind of trouble with the law?”

“No, no,” he said with a slow shake of the head and a melancholic smile, “my problems have nothing to do with breaking laws, only with speaking the truth.”

“That’s fine then, I suppose.” I said, really knowing deep down it might not be, still feeling trouble could be attached to what he might tell me. “But why…what do you mean you’ve been on the lam?”

He turned away from me and again looked out the window alongside the article and the picture. As if searching for the answer to my question in those towering green pines or the endless blue space above them, he drew on his cigarette. After exhaling at the whirling fan above, he turned back to me and said, “This is going to sound kind of absurd, Jake, but when I say I’ve been on the lam, the run, whatever, I’m not even sure who, if anybody, is after me.”

I must have looked at him as if he had four arms because a knowing look rose on his face and he chuckled before continuing.

“Do you like to read, Jake?”

“Sure, but mostly on my lunch breaks. Not much at home. I’ve got a wife with an endless honey-do list, two kids with more energy than the electric company, and six acres that also need constant attention. I’m always busy. But I do like reading…guys like Conroy and Jim Harrison, you know, fairly dramatic stuff.”

“Well that’s terrific. I’m glad you read because I have an idea. You see, telling you my entire story would take days, sitting here like this, and now we both know you don’t have that kind of spare time. Don’t get me wrong, I sure hope you continue stopping over here. I really enjoy talking with you. Any time my car’s out front you’re more than welcome to come to the door. Anyway, back to my idea. How would you like to read a manuscript of mine? It’s a memoir. Not a life story but it details what has happened to me since I won the prize. It explains everything you might want to know about this loony old man and why he’s holing up in a thirty-five-year-old trailer in the North Maine Woods. Also, if you read it, you’ll fully understand why I’m so desperate to share what I’ve been through.”