A Dismal Thing To Do (18 page)

“The meeting will come to order,” barked Dubois. “Does anybody know why Rhys took his sister-in-law to the Portage?”

“Sneakin’ a night out while his wife’s laid up,” said either a McLumber or a Grouse. “That’s the way them rich aristocrats act. My wife’s always readin’ about them in books she gets at a paperback exchange. Has to keep ’em hid in a closet where the kids can’t find ’em.”

Dubois was trying hard not to lose his temper. “Anybody who has any real information on what Rhys is doing around here will also funnel it back to me as fast as possible. Now let’s go on with the business of the meeting. How are we progressing with the transport situation, Brother F?”

“Well, I been scoutin’ around, and I come up with two possibilities. There’s a school bus we could get for five hundred dollars, but she’d need an awful lot of work. You know how they drive them things till they tear the guts out of ’em. The other one’s a delivery truck I thought we might be able to fit up with seats in the back from that old movie theater they’re tearing down over at the Fort. She’d be kind of a tight squeeze and we’d have to figure out some way to ventilate the back, but she’s not in too bad condition, considering.”

“How much?”

“Owner’s askin’ twenty-two fifty, but I think I could beat him down. The engine’s in pretty good shape, and the tires still got some tread on ’em.”

“But would we have room enough for our equipment?”

“I figured we could put racks up around the sides.”

“Sounds like you’d have to build the goddamn thing over before we could use it,” objected a brother wearing a sealskin cap that must have been his grandfather’s. “I move we keep looking. If only we’d commandeered Perce Bergeron’s bull box before some jeezledy bastard beat us to it!”

“That bull box wasn’t Uncle Perce’s.” A young Bergeron, obviously. “It was a family heirloom and Uncle Armand would have raised holy hell and queered the whole expedition if we’d tried to lay a finger on it. You know that as well as I do, Jock. I mean Brother Q.”

“But Armand’s in sympathy with our aims. Hell, he’s suffered as much as anybody and a damn sight more than some, hasn’t he? Havin’ to turn a decent huntin’ lodge into a goddamn honky-tonk because the goddamn acid rain’s started to kill the goddamn lakes and the goddamn trees so the goddamn fish an’ the goddamn animals can’t live in ’em. He knows it’s got to be stopped, same as we do. And he knows those goddamn bastards down there won’t ever do a goddamn thing but sit around on their backsides claiming they got to do another goddamn study because they don’t want the goddamn bastards that’s running the factories and financing their campaigns to get mad at ’em. Why the flamin’ sweet Nellie can’t we just pile into our cars and go down there and drop our bombs down those goddamn stinking smokestacks and be done with it?”

“Because we’d fail in our mission and be a damn sight worse off than we are now, that’s why,” Dubois insisted. “We’ve been through this time after time, Brother Q. We’re not trying to start a border war, we’re trying to call attention to the plight of our environment in a way dramatic enough to show the entire North American continent that we mean to get something done about saving it while there’s still time. But there’s no sense in making martyrs of ourselves for nothing, and that’s what will happen if we go off half-cocked and defeat our own purpose. If we go in separate vehicles, some of us are bound to get stopped at the border, found to be carrying concealed explosives, and arrested as terrorists. That will blow the lid off for the rest of us, and you know it as well as I do. We stick to our plan. We all go together, or we don’t go at all. Is that clear?”

“What about Jase Bain’s junkyard?” yelled somebody in the hindmost row, “I wasn’t in on that.”

“Jase Bain’s junkyard?” Dubois sounded genuinely astonished. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brother P.”

“Seems to me there’s one hell of a lot you don’t know for somebody that claims to be runnin’ the show. You tryin’ to tell us you didn’t sneak over there last night an’ blow the place up to test out what we was goin’ to do at the automobile plant?”

“Nom de Dieu,
no! What would be the point? A junkyard’s not a factory or anything like it. We have no explosives to waste and I don’t need the practice. I told you I learned demolition in the army. So did Brother J and Brother K, they tell me. Where were you two last night, if it comes to that?”

“Look, I got no time to sit here listenin’ to foolishness,” either Brother J or Brother K called back. “I promised to drive Buddy’s mother into town. She’s hellbent on talkin’ to Ben Potts about the funeral.”

A wise leader knew when to give in gracefully. “Right, brothers. I think we’ve accomplished as much as we can here today. I’m sure every one of us will want to attend the funeral of our fallen comrade. Keep up the good fight, and for God’s sake try to get a line on the person who felled him. I’ll look into the matter of the bombed junkyard personally as soon as I get my next week’s article into the mail. It’s a real zinger this time, I promise you.”

“Ayup, and it’ll do about as much good as the last one did,” muttered the malcontent Brother Q. “What a goddamn waste o’ time this turned out to be.”

“T
HEY WAS PRETTY QUIET
today.”

Sam had led Madoc in an unerring beeline back to the. camouflaged car. They’d stowed the tarpaulin back under the tree and were warming themselves up with Annabelle’s hot tea and gingerbread. “Usually they do a lot more ran-tin’ an’ cussin’ about them jeezledy sons o’ bitches that run the gov’ment, not that I blame ‘em none. You goin’ to run ‘em in for conspiracy?”

“Oh, I hardly think so,” said Madoc. “I might just drop a word to the customs people at Windsor about keeping an eye out for a school bus loaded with grown men wearing fancy sashes and carrying hand grenades. How long has the Brotherhood been in existence, Sam?”

“Last couple o’ months, since Dubois blew into town. Ice fishin’s been no damn good this winter, an’ I guess they figured they might as well do somethin’ to entertain theirselves.”

“Who are they, do you know?”

“Yup.”

“Perhaps you’d oblige me by writing down their names, then.”

Madoc held out his notebook and pencil. Sam shied away from them.

“I ain’t much for writin’ things down. Ain’t much for squealin’, neither, as a rule. If it wasn’t for that McLumber kid gettin’ shot—”

“I understand, Sam. Do you know where they’re getting their explosives?”

“Ain’t got none yet, between you an’ me. That was just bletherin’. Dubois is waitin’ till he gets his master plan worked out, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. He snuck over to Detroit an’ took some snapshots an’ swiped a handful o’ street maps out o’ one o’ them tourist information places. They been passin’ ’em around at the meetin’s an’ jawin’ about strategies of attack.”

“Diabolical,” Madoc murmured, pouring out the last of the tea.

“Oh, it’s all that an’ then some.” Sam squinted down the mouth of the thermos to make sure none was going to waste. “They can get their hands on some dynamite easy enough. Swipe it from a construction site, maybe, or get six or eight o’ the brothers to buy a few sticks each, claimin’ they want it for blastin’ out stumps or whatever. Funny thing, though, last time I looked in on ’em, that McLumber kid that got killed was gassin’ to Dubois about how he knew where to lay ‘is hands on somethin’ better than dynamite.”

“What do you mean he was gassing to Dubois? Didn’t the rest hear him, too?”

“Nope. The kid got there before anybody else. Then Dubois showed up an’ Bud begun tellin’ him about it, real excited. He wanted it announced with a great foofaraw at the meetin’, but Dubois told ’im this was top secret stuff just between the two of ’em an’ they wasn’t to breathe a word of it to nobody. So Bud was pretty tickled at that an’ set there the whole time smirkin’ like a dern fool Chessie cat.”

“Did you hear Buddy explain to Dubois why this explosive was so superior?”

“Hell, he didn’t know ‘is ass from ’is elbow. He claimed it was somethin’ brand-new that made one hell of a big bang, then set a fire that was hotter’n the flamin’ blue hubs o’ Tophet. He said it was sure top secret all right, that there wasn’t hardly nobody that knew about it. Dubois says then how come Bud knew, an’ for once in his life, the kid clammed up. So I reckon Dubois caught on that it was just a bunch o’ hot air an’ wasn’t goin’ to make a fool of hisself, takin’ Bud at ’is word.”

Sam grinned, but Madoc didn’t. “You say the kid told him the stuff exploded with unusual violence and then burned with intense heat?”

“That’s what he said. Melted steel, burned brick an concrete right down to a powder. Wasn’t a damn thing it wouldn’t do, to hear him tell it. An’ it was easy as pie to use an’ you didn’t need more’n about a teacupful to wipe out a whole goddamn factory.”

“And you doubt that Dubois believed him?”

“Would you?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Madoc, “I would. Sam, has Bert told you what really happened to Janet?”

“He kind o’ hinted that she’d run into a gang o’ toughs an’ had ’er car stole, but he didn’t want Annabelle an’ the boys to know ’cause you’re out to get ’em an’ you don’t want any talk goin’ around that might tip ’em off who she was.”

“That’s the general drift. Here’s the rest.”

Madoc told Sam the whole story, beginning with Perce Bergeron’s bull box and ending with Eyeball Grouse’s stolen object. Sam listened without saying a word. Then he nodded.

“Them names. You want to write ’em down?”

“If you’d rather I did.” It dawned on Madoc that Sam had likely never learned to read and write with any facility, if at all. He wiped off the gingerbread crumbs on the paper napkin Annabelle had furnished, picked up his pencil, and said, “Go ahead.”

Sam began reeling them off in alphabetical order, giving each one a pithy character reference as he went. They seemed a worthy enough bunch on the whole, though there were some who couldn’t be trusted with a bottle, a surprising number who couldn’t be trusted with another man’s wife, and a few who couldn’t be trusted with anything whatsoever. Two of these were McLumbers and one was a Grouse.

“That lot come from Bigears, I assume,” said Madoc. “Do any of the others?”

“Nope.”

“Does any of the rest speak with that odd little Bigears twist to the ends of his words?”

“Nope. You got to be born to it, seems like.”

“Then let’s concentrate on those three. Does any of them go off for overnight or longer without letting on where he’s going?”

“Hell yes. They all do.”

“Together or separately?”

“Depends.”

“Was one or more of them away night before last, when Janet had her car stolen?”

“I can find out.”

“Do that, will you? Also, do you know of anybody from Bigears who’s left the village and gone to the bad?”

“Well, there’s one in jail an’ one in Parliament.”

Madoc awarded this quip one of his sad little smiles. “Give me their names and I’ll run a check. One never knows. Do you think Pierre Dubois is using this Brotherhood thing as a cover for some kind of scam?”

“Nope. Ain’t got sense enough to make it work. Look at all that goddamn foolishness about Brother A an’ Brother B when they all know each other as well as I know you an’ a damn sight better. An’ yammerin’ about secrecy an’ then gettin’ em to wear them damn fool sashes in public that Thyrdis Flyte weaves for ’em.”

“She told me she didn’t,” said Madoc.

“Don’t s’prise me none. She’d lie in what she figured was a righteous cause an’ feel like a hero-wine for doin’ it. Her an’ Brother E, they go in for high thinkin’. Fine people, but they just can’t help trustin’ that anybody who’s on the right side knows what the hell he’s up to. Far as bomb-in’ them cussed factories that’s spewin’ acid all over the Northeast is concerned, I don’t say as I’d mind havin’ a go at it myself if I thought it would do any good. Trouble is, there’s so cussed many of ’em, an’ it ain’t just the Yanks, neither. An’ it’s more than factories, too. Take that poor young jackass Bud McLumber, for instance, yellin’ about pollution while he was drivin’ that goddamn snowmobile lickety-split through the woods he was so friggin’ concerned to protect. Time you got through bombin’ ’em all, you’d o’ made such a mess we’d never get dug out from here to doomsday. If we get a move on, we ought to make it back in time for dinner. Annabelle might have some o’ that there stew left we had yesterday. Always tastes better warmed up, to my way o’ thinkin’.”

It had tasted pretty good the first time around, Madoc remembered. Bert was no doubt wondering when Sam would be back to finish the work he was getting paid for. Besides, Madoc had a few projects of his own. He started the car, backed very carefully away from the gully before he turned, and concentrated on his driving till he’d got them safely out to the paved road. Then he asked Sam, “What do you know about that man Jim Badger who brought the house out near Bain’s?”

“Not a jeezledy goddamn thing,” said. Sam with palpable disgust. “He comes an’ he goes, an’ that’s the best I can tell you. Claims to be a traveler for some sportin’ goods firm.”

“Why do you say he claims to?”

“Well, I ain’t never seen his paycheck. Can’t be doin’ too bad for hisself, anyhow. He paid cash on the button for the house. ’Bout twice what it was worth, too. Don’t ask me what he wanted it for in the first place. He ain’t in it more’n two or three times a month, far’s I’ve ever been able to make out. Comes in with a bagful o’ them frozen dinners an’ holes up for a day or so, then he’s off again. Drives a big dark green Chevy station wagon full o’ hockey sticks an’ the like.”

“Yes, Fred Olson told me about that. Does Badger ever have company?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Fred Olson says Badger told him he’d been trying to find a woman to move in but hasn’t had any luck so far.”

“Then he’s either hellish fussy or he ain’t been lookin’ very hard. There’s men older an’ poorer than him that don’t have much trouble,” Sam replied somewhat smugly. “He’d have to get one that’s already got ’er own car, I s’pose. Time was when you could set a female down somewheres an’ she’d stay where you put ’er, but now they all want to be out runnin’ the roads.”