The Lost Highway (23 page)

—

T
HE EMBERS FELL AND THE COALS BRIGHTENED, AND THERE
was a knock on the door.

Bourque walked in, and Alex was stunned to discover how short he was. His black eyes were penetrating, however, and matched his toss of black hair and his thick mustache and thicker neck. He sat on the couch and put his right arm around Alex, like a man might with a woman. Alex had once mocked Leo behind his back. He would not dare now. But still and all, might he have to outsmart him?

Leo placed his right arm, which Alex could tell was as strong as an iron bar, over Alex’s shoulder and said, “You won’t have to worry anymore—and we will figure this all out together—but we have to do it very quickly and get Poppy onside. I think of you as my friend. I always have!”

Alex tried to calm himself, but he could feel his high blood pressure, which caused his legs to ache suddenly. He did not know what to say, and finally said, “It is all a dream—if it was there, I should have found it by now. And I think we should try to tell my uncle about it—he did do some awful kind things for me, you know!”

Leo slapped him on the back of the head. “Not your uncle, no! Trust me! I’ll take care of it for you. Later you have your uncle to deal with—now is the time—is
our
time! I’ve never had my time, now is it!”

“Why can’t we tell my uncle?”

“Because it is too late—for you have told me—and have already told Toes.” (This was unfortunate Burton’s nickname, because of his amputated foot.) “If you go to your uncle, everything will fall apart—he won’t give me a cent! That is the position you are in now, so get used to it. Besides, once you have the money you can be more generous to your old uncle than he would be to you.”

Alex was beginning to feel the deep betrayal of his uncle, and the substantial part he had played in his own Aunt Muriel’s heartbreak.

Then, after a considerable pause, Leo said, “But I want at least a little bit more.”

“More—what do you mean?” Alex asked. In all his travels, in all the time he had spent on the earth, he suddenly realized this was the moment bound to happen. He suddenly felt as if he had joined some other part of the highway—that part his uncle had always fought against—but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what part of the highway he was now being loyal to. Leo, too, after a lifetime of trying hard to please the better angels of his nature had now fallen into somewhere darker than ever before, because of this promised ticket.

Leo, knowing the power of being mysterious, simply said very quietly, “A little more, not much—three quarters.”

There was a long pause.

Leo kept his hand on Alex’s shoulder and said, “I am willing to take care of it all for you! Burton hasn’t caught on, has he—and that’s the thing, to keep Burton in the dark—”

“Yes,” Alex said, “but I will give you half—no more.”

Leo only shrugged.

Alex asked for his pills, in the cupboard, and tried as best he could to look serene, but his heart was pounding, and as always his left arm became weak.

Kill him or it will be a disaster, came a sudden thought. Bourque’s back was turned, he was whistling. Still Alex could not.

“Pills,” Bourque said, “poor little fella—you on pills—on the pills.” And he brought the pills over to his friend. “Don’t die on us yet,” he said, smiling.

Alex shuddered, took two pills with some water, and sat at the table trying to catch his breath, while Leo stood over him, hand on his shoulder. He could smell the damp evening air.

“A bit of asthma,” Alex said.

“It’s all this weather and chemicals in the air,” Leo said sympathetically. “It’s the government—we should have a revolution. Something like in Cuba.”

“That’s exactly what I said for years,” Alex commented. “That was the whole purpose of my doctorate. I wanted an ethical revolution—one that brought us all together.”

“Yes, well that’s what we will have—a big friendly revolution, starting tonight!” And Bourque tossed Alex’s orange hair with his big friendly hand.

Alex found it hard to breathe again. Staring at this man, he knew if he did or did not do anything, helped or not helped, it no longer mattered, because the lie he invested in was already out, and this man had taken flight into dreams of wealth and power.

He stared in astonishment as Leo spoke about the ticket, about what he would do when he got it. That he would “put a few things to rest, let me tell you.”

He spoke like a man who had been tormented all his life and was now willing to get back at everyone.

“Sooner or later I knew it would come my way,” he said.

How could this be happening? Leo stood, short, blunt, with an impassive jovial face. The one who had written Alex as a schoolboy.

That friend from his past Alex had boldly demanded had come back.

—

A
LEX HAD THOUGHT THAT WHO WOULD COME BACK WERE
the friends he so desired to have near, those boys and girls all practiced in the art of easy common-room revolution, piqued and galled, protected, ineffectual and cowardly. The ones he could easily impress with progressive thought.

But someone else had returned. That erstwhile right winger into his left-wing world. He’d returned and was deciding in quick measure what direction Alex’s life should now take. Alex realized the great respect this man had for him, and would continue to have for him—as long as he performed the way this man believed he should. But wasn’t that like his friends in the common room as well?

Leo was curious about Alex now. “All that learning and after the same thing I am,” he said. He smiled roughly wondering about this.

And Alex didn’t like his look, or his wondering.

“I am going over to your uncle’s and find the ticket.”

“When, now—tonight?”

“No, tomorrow afternoon—of course tonight—why not tonight! Your uncle might be back tomorrow—”

“Well don’t touch anything else!”

Bourque turned at the door, and a look of displeasure at this command crossed his face, and then he shrugged.

—

A
LEX STARED AT THE DOOR LONG, LONG AFTER THE MAN
had gone. He thought of sin, and himself as a child. How he worried about sin in the priesthood, and how he combated the idea of any sin in university among the professorial. To believe there was sin was to conjure up forgiveness—which he refused to do. Approval or disapproval was better. One might say the priests themselves instigated this with their demonic irrelevance in the modern world, and how everything to some of them was a sin.

He did not know that Amy now lived her life in constant worry about Fanny Groat who was dying, about Burton who was teased, and that the money he had promised her was to be given all away, to help get Fanny Groat a bed at the senior citizens’ home.

He did not know that she believed him, and wanted to like him. Would he then approve or disapprove?

“I need the ticket—and I will do whatever it takes to get it,” he decided again.

He followed Leo Bourque into the dark, across the wet field, and stopped dead, looking up at the windows of the house. There, from his vantage point, he could see a small flashlight zigzag crazily against the inside night, spraying the walls and certain curtains, illuminating for a second some artifact Alex had long held in private affection. For some reason this horrified him, and he could not move—as that flashlight moved, from one dark room to the next, and then up the long dark stairs.

Alex watched, then remembering the money his uncle had written to Mr. Roach, the messages he had placed in the papers looking for Alex’s mother, he was unable to come to terms with his betrayal, and turned and went home.

Bourque stayed in Chapman’s house another hour, searching every room. He tried to be calm but he left much on the dull hardwood floors. Agitated and sweating he moved to the last few rooms on the third floor. There he paused and lit a cigarette. For five minutes he conjured up visions of the ticket and tried to remain calm.

I will find it—and no one will get it before I do, he thought.

When he entered the last small room upstairs, Alex’s, the moon was just coming out—the rain had stopped, and light glowed on the top of the truck and made it shimmer. He saw all of this in a daze because of his long hard day—but again the truck, parked behind the house and up against the willows at the edge of the property, struck him. He glanced up at the moon, and decided to leave. Then, quite suddenly, he was sure he knew where the ticket must be.

He turned and headed back toward Alex’s. He was sorry that Alex was mixed up in this, and wondered if there was any way to keep him quiet if he found the ticket and did not want to share it. But this was a fleeting thought.

“For now it is better if we share—for it will be one less person to worry about—later—later we will see.” He could not help but think this, even though he did not take it seriously. Of course he would give Alex his share, even though he still blamed the man for his difficulty. Again something plagued him, and he was uncertain as to exactly what. Then he shivered. Amy Patch.

Leo Bourque crossed over the great desolation and moved under the moon, in the direction of Chapman’s little cabin.

He had deduced certain things. Some people would get their noses bent out of joint by this, and he was certain some people would want an investigation. Poppy Bourque, therefore, was the key. Everyone loved him, just as everyone distrusted Jim Chapman. Poppy must cash this out for them—and say nothing about it too!

—

“W
ELL THEN WE FIND THE TICKET AND GO OUR SEPARATE
ways—”

“Yes,” Alex said, “that might be okay.”

Bourque had come in without even knocking, and taken wine from the cupboard without even asking, and drank from the bottle without even hesitating. Thus began Alex’s true reversal of fortune. Up until this moment, as certain as he said he didn’t, he had always felt superior to this man. Now this man ran him, maneuvered him the way he wished.

For the time being, Alex thought now, and he suddenly became animated.

They began to discuss where the ticket might be. Leo was calm as he drank.

“Let’s just say I have a firm idea of where it is,” Bourque said. “I might be wrong—and if I am we are still flat broke—if I am not wrong, however!”

Bourque talked of his mother, and how she never had a penny and he was doing it for her. That all Poppy Bourque ever had was a pile of sawdust. Tears shimmering in his eyes, he talked about his father and his sister, and his look became fixated, his jaw set. But there was something that Alex could not readily put his finger on. Some self-deception unregistered yet present. For he had felt the same things himself.

“Fine,” Alex said, shivering.

Alex had experienced this same feeling in university, this feeling that what was said was not true but elevated to the status of truth by people who hid their own natures from themselves, in a kind of weird juxtaposition between learning and falsehood that they embraced with great connivance, in pleasant clothes.

This, too, was how he felt about Bourque’s analogy. There was a lie somewhere. He looked at Bourque and the vague and uneasy familiarity came back. In a fleeting moment, a voice said, “You are going deeper into the abyss and might never return.”

Just at this same moment Bourque was speaking about all the people on the lost highway who he loved. In fact, he seemed to love everyone at that moment.

He spoke of his wife and said, “Yes, what could she do once I started taking pills—I was a mess. So she went out and got fucked by someone else, does that matter?” The way he said it showed he was trying to force himself to disregard it but could not.

Alex, though, was aware of this voice, this small authoritative warning from his mother: “Stop now.”

When Bourque simply said, “Well let’s go get this ticket—and no more fooling about.”

“What do you want to do, search the house again—?”

“Not on your life,” Bourque said, sniffing and smiling.

“Well, where?”

There was a pause and then Bourque smiled, as if he had just thought of something. “Will you give me an extra million or two if I get you this ticket right now?”

Alex did not know if he was serious. “What do you mean—if you have it you better tell me,” Alex said, perhaps for the first time in his life asserting himself in front of a grown man. He was angry now, furious at this cat and mouse and also at this awful assumption Mr. Bourque had, that he could play this cat and mouse with his uncle’s ticket, and that Alex wouldn’t mind this horrible disregard of the Chapman family. Alex was also furious with himself for allowing this.

“Oh I will tell you,” Bourque said, “and I will give it to you tonight—but I want an extra million out of your end to give to my uncle, for he is the key here. He must claim the ticket. We might have a problem if either of us did it—but we’ll say it is his—he got his oil changed in his old sawdust truck at the same time. Well, how do tickets get mixed up when you have a retard like Burton. Once he has it, he has it, and no one will say nothing—”

Alex was silent. Then: “I don’t want all my money taken away—in fact it was my idea—”

“But it is not your ticket—and I know where it is. It will still leave you with five million.”

“Five!”

“I will get six—a finder’s fee—since I know where it is—and my uncle gets two—he was going to get one anyway, but now he gets two—two is the amount. If we give him two it will shut him up—he is a wonderful man but he is a blabbermouth. Just a sawdust truck-driving fucker.”

“Well what about my uncle—?”

“Your uncle is your problem—I want nothing to do with your uncle,” Bourque said emphatically.

There was a long and desperate pause as Alex tried to calculate what he could not, with Bourque staring at him.

“What have you decided?”

“I have decided we will do it tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow might be too late.”

“Tomorrow,” Alex said, for some reason.

Doing it “tomorrow” instead of “tonight” would change their lives forever.

—

W
EDNESDAY AND
S
ATURDAY NIGHTS
A
MY TOOK A COURSE
on Saint Mark at the church. So she would have to leave home after supper and make her way down the road and along the highway, with the sky clear and the distant stars steady and the dull chunks of sawdust off old Poppy Bourque’s truck, which had small bits of shiny crystal in them, under her feet. He had, that old man, loved Minnie’s mother for years and she did not love him back. He had waited for her but she had not. They said he once bought her a diamond ring, and when she refused it he threw it into the dirt on the Gum Road. To this day kids still looked for that ring when they walked it. The only thing that seemed to be left of this memory was his sawdust tracks on the road.