Deadline (15 page)

The fishermen weren't missing much.

I didn't say this to Roxanne. She was younger and, like all young people who live in cities, liked little restaurants that served up pseudo-ethnic food. She wanted to go to a place that was supposed to be Caribbean or something and served spicy broiled fish. I could picture us eating broiled Mahi-mahi, drinking Jamaican beer that was fifty cents a bottle in Kingston but four bucks a bottle in Maine. What was wrong with clam chowder and a Budweiser?

It just didn't thrill me, the idea of sitting in some place where all the men were good-looking, the women white and blonde and of obvious good breeding. And then there'd be me, the guy with the cuts on his face, who was wondering where they put all the mothers and grandmothers, much less the poor people.

So I said I had to get back to Androscoggin, which I did. Roxanne looked disappointed but beautiful, and went into the kitchen to mix up some tuna salad for an early lunch. I had mine on whole wheat, with a Labatt's from the back of her refrigerator. Roxanne had hers on a small rye toast. With spring water.

“You see what I mean?” Roxanne said, taking small, surgical bites. “If Arthur's down there and he's killed, it's premeditated because somebody had to get him down there. Like an execution. You don't execute somebody because he takes dirty pictures.”

“Not usually.”

“He was weird,” Roxanne said. “Maybe he was into something else. I don't know. Maybe he did more with these pictures than just look at them.”

Well, we knew what
something more
meant. Blackmail. Get a shot of the guy with his secretary and then squeeze them for cash. But Arthur? What did he want? Certainly not money.

“I just can't picture it. There wasn't anything greedy about him. He didn't want, I don't know, things. God, if you could see how he lived.”

“Was it awful?”

“No; you see worse, I'm sure. It wasn't that it was a shack or anything. It was just this back of what had been his business. Like me sleeping in the back of the newspaper office.”

“For years.”

“Right,'' I said. “It isn't poverty. It's existence.”

“It's a different world,” Roxanne said.

I finished my beer and nodded.

“You're telling me,” I said.

“But it was nice of you to visit,” she said, a soft smile bringing back instant images of the morning.

“Sure beats the phone, doesn't it?”

I was halfway to my desk before I realized I was supposed to be in traction or on crutches, or at least battered beyond recognition.

“Jack!” Cindy called, squeezing as much concern into the one word as any Shakespearean actor ever could. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said, but it was too late.

They crowded around, Cindy helping me with my coat, and Paul and Vern and Marion hovering as if to help me to my seat.

“Paul said you kicked his ass—whoops, sorry,” Cindy said. “I knew Cormier in high school. He was this big goof, and he went out with this girl I knew, but she couldn't stand him, so she finally dumped him, and then he started seeing this girl from Dixfield, so none of us saw him much after that. Thank God. You're lucky he didn't break your hands or something; you wouldn't be able to type.”

I stood there and felt my Roxanne glow drain away.

“Okay,” I said. “I appreciate it, the concern and everything, but it really wasn't that big a deal. Really. Nothing. Foolishness I wish I'd never had anything to do with. Thanks, but let's just forget it.”

“Come on, Jack,” Paul said, tapping me on the shoulder. “It isn't every day the editor of the paper gets in a friggin' fight and actually wins.”

“I wish it was no day.”

Oh, God. They looked hurt again. I gave them a smile and thanked them for carrying on without me for the morning.

“Any messages?” I said.

“You got a call,” Cindy said. “Correction from last week. In the sentences? Guy says we put him down for six months in jail when it should have been six days. He was ripped. And I think maybe he'd been drinking. He said he'd call back.”

She headed for the counter.

“And Martin was in for his check,” Cindy said. “I told him you'd be in later, and he said he'd be back. And another thing, you might
think this is queer, but I didn't know what to do. Arthur got a check. You want me to send it back or what?”

To where? His estate? Probate court?

“Leave it and I'll take care of it,” I said.

She high-heeled her way back to me and handed over two blue envelopes.

“All yours,” she said.

I stuffed them in my pocket and walked out the door. Better to drop Martin's check at his house than get stuck talking with him all afternoon. And better for me to get out of Roxanne's brother's shirt. He might need it for the family reunion.

Martin's house was on Monument Street in a neighborhood of small brick Victorian houses originally built for middle management people at the mill. They weren't grand, but they were on a hill overlooking the town. What was more important was that they were downwind.

I left the car running in the driveway and went up the steps to the glassed-in porch. As I raised my hand to knock, the inside door rattled and dogs started yipping on the other side of the door.

“Michael! Tillie! It's Mr. McMorrow. Now you behave yourselves. Oh, these dogs. Now get down before I have to …”

The door opened and two dachshunds flashed out past me and then back on to the porch, barking the whole way but at nothing in particular. I stepped in and saw Pauline Wiggins standing at the inner door that went into the house.

“Hi, Mrs. Wiggins,” I said, and offered the envelope. “This is for Martin. His check. I was going home and I thought I'd save him the trip.”

She opened the door wider.

“Come in now, Mr. McMorrow, don't worry about your shoes. I'll get Martin. What do you take in your coffee, dear?”

Martin's voice came from inside the house.

“That Jack? Well, have him come in, Pauline. Have him come in. Jack, come on in, good to see you. Get you a cup of coffee? Pauline, get Jack a cup of coffee. Mike. Tillie. No. Get in there.”

Outnumbered and outflanked, I surrendered.

The house smelled old, like Martin's coats and old tweed jackets, and even like his breath. I'd been there twice before, but had never come in this far.

“Coffee cake, Martin,” Pauline was saying, leading the way into the kitchen. “Did you finish that coffee cake? I told you not to eat all of it. Sometimes I wonder. Oh, good. That's enough. I won't have any.”

She was a retired high-school English teacher and she ran the house like a study hall. I remembered that from the last time when she had been nagging Martin about the garden hose and leaving it out, and how she had told him to put it away and he hadn't, and now he'd driven over it and she didn't know if it had a crack in it and it was practically new.

Pauline was like the dogs, nipping and yipping at Martin's heels. He was deferential but resigned, like somebody who'd once thought of rebellion but had buried the idea deep over the years.

“Sit down, Jack,” Martin said. “Give me your coat.”

I handed him the coat and the check. He folded the envelope and put it in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

“Keep the bill collectors away another month,” he said.

Pauline put coffee in mugs and cream and sugar on the table. Everything matched, with salmon-colored flowers that went with the wallpaper. She went to a drawer and took out matching cloth napkins with embroidered W's and put one at each of three seats.

Oh, Lord, I thought.

The last time I'd been at the Wiggins house, we'd sat on the porch and looked at bound volumes of the
Review
from the thirty years when Martin was editor. The papers were folksy, with correspondents from each little hollow who made sure that the readers knew everything everyone had done in the past week, whom they'd seen, where they'd gone after church on Sunday.

After that, Martin had taken me into the den to see his guns. They were oiled and polished and displayed on racks on the wall like trophies: rifles, shotguns, revolvers. A Parker twelve-gauge shotgun he'd inherited from his father. It didn't mean much to me but I'd tried to seem impressed. Nothing like an old gun to get your blood moving.

The guns and old papers were nice, but what really made an impression on me was Pauline's pride in her husband's work, and the implication that I had a big pair of shoes to fill. It was like he had to be somebody to be married to her. It was small-town status-seeking mixed up with affection and pride, and it was interesting to watch and listen. Interesting to a point.

“You working today?” Martin asked.

“A little,” I said. “Yesterday was long, going to press and all.”

“Oh, yeah. The big crunch. We used to get back at dawn, sleep for an hour, and then have to go back in to open at eight o'clock. But we loved it.”

“We didn't have these computers,” Pauline said, handing me the plate of cake. “It was all typewriters and hot lead and all the rest of it. But I'd be down there every night after school. Couldn't keep me away. Sometimes I think I chose the wrong career, don't I, Martin?”

Martin didn't answer.

“You'd go down after teaching every day?” I said, sipping the coffee.

“Oh my, yes,” Pauline said, warming up. “I started going down to the
Androscoggin Review
back when I was still in high school and Martin and I were keeping company, back when I was a junior. I was just a girl, and my father, he was a manager at the mill; he thought this newspaper business was really not the most reputable thing, but I insisted, and he wanted me to be happy. Papa always did want me to be happy.”

“So you've been together ever since high school?”

“Oh, yes,” Pauline said, while Martin watched and perhaps listened. “High school and then teachers' college, and then it was that next summer we were married. That was right after the Depression, and then there was the war, but we survived, with the grace of God.”

“That's a long time to be together,” I said, finishing the coffee.

“Fifty-one years,” Pauline said. “We weren't blessed with children, but we were blessed in other ways. These young people today—oh, you'll think we're old codgers or something—but these young people today. Divorces and not getting married and fighting over the children and this and that. We were lucky, I think. Martin had the paper and I had my teaching. Felt like half the town was my children, what with the school. But it was much smaller then. Oh, a different town. A different time, but that's life, right?”

“Surprised you never tied the knot, Jack,” Martin said abruptly.

I smiled. How did he know I hadn't been married five times?

“I'm waiting for the right one to come along,” I said. “This girl I saw in the office last week. She looked like the right woman to me. Pretty thing; you would have thought so, Pauline.”

“Local girl, Mr. McMorrow?” Pauline asked.

“Portland,” I said.

The doorbell rang and the dogs went skating across the linoleum on their claws. I got up and drifted that way with Martin. An older woman was at the door with an empty dish that she gave to Pauline.

Martin and I went out on the lawn, where a man in a pickup truck was waiting.

“Martin,” I said. “I was going to tell you. I was at Arthur's, and I saw this old picture of you—at least, it looks like you. I don't know. You're sitting with this girl. I figured it was back when you were a swinging bachelor.”

He looked at me funny and didn't say anything.

“I took it by mistake, looking for some stuff for the paper. I was going to give it to you.”

Martin still looked funny.

“Oh, yeah,” he said vaguely, and then the dogs had bolted out the door and he was calling them and I walked to the car, which after a half-hour was still running. Nothing like Swedish technology.

I got in, waved, and drove off.

I went home, and at four-thirty, was back at the office in a clean shirt and corduroys.

Martin was waiting on the sidewalk.

11

H
e was at my side as soon as I got out of the car.

“Jack,” Martin said. “I was just wondering about that picture. The one with me in it. I was wondering if I could have it now. Probably wouldn't mean much to anybody else, so long ago. Nice to hang on to, you know? I know you're busy, but I'll go in with you and get it, take it off your hands.”

I shut the car door. A four-wheel-drive pickup with loud exhaust blared by, and I waited.

“You knew what I was talking about? Which one?”

“I think so,” Martin said.

He looked cold, with pale cheeks.

“You and a girl,” I said. “You're sort of hugging. Maybe not hugging. Sort of leaning. And she's got her head on your shoulder.”