Go With Me (15 page)

Lillian watched Blackway stand and go to Nate, the ax in his right hand. He kicked Nate again, this time in the side of the head. Nate went out. Blackway stood over him. He straddled Nate as Nate lay beside the fire. Blackway looked across the fire at Lillian. Lillian looked back at him. She saw that Blackway’s face, lit by the fire, was badly broken and cut on one side where Nate had beaten him, but she saw more than that. She saw Blackway was old. “You’re old,” she whispered. “You’re finished.” Blackway was going the way of all the others. He was old, and he was hurt. He was in trouble here, and he knew it. But he wasn’t done yet. He stood over Nate and looked across the red, flaring firelight at Lillian. He raised the heavy double-bitted ax high above his head, as though he were about to split a chunk.

“Watch this, sweetheart,” said Blackway.

Lillian tried to cry out No, or Stop, or Don’t, or anything at all. She had drawn in her breath to say it when the entire sky exploded above and behind her in a bright flash and a blast and a sudden, passing impact, like a high wind, that snatched at her hair and blew the fire aside and seemed to pluck Blackway from where he stood above Nate’s body and fling him backward into the darkness beyond the firelight.

Lillian might have lost consciousness for a moment. Her ears rang and her eyes were dazzled by the flash. She was aware of sitting up on the seat and looking across the fire at Lester. Lester was there now. He stood beside Nate, who had come to and sat up. Nate was rubbing his knee. Both of them were looking at Blackway, whose boots, unmoving, Lillian could see extending from the dark into the firelight. Lester held propped on his right shoulder a long, heavy gun, its barrels pointing up into the sky. He and Nate were looking down at Blackway.

“Jeesum,” said Lester.

16

CONSPIRACIES

Whizzer drained his beer. Conrad pulled three more out of the case beside him and handed them to Whizzer, Coop, and D.B. He took the last for himself.

“So,” Conrad said, “Wingate had stacked the deck, right? He had a stacked deck. He switched it in. That’s what you’re saying?”

“I never thought so,” said D.B. “It was a straight game. Wingate won it.”

“If you believe that,” Whizzer said, “you’ll believe anything.”

“Why?” D.B. asked him.

“He said it, didn’t he? You heard him. Wingate. He said, ‘His deal. My deck.’”

“Oh, well,” said Coop. “That’s just Wingate, ain’t it?”

“What do you mean?” D.B. asked him.

“Just him talking,” said Coop.

“Wingate don’t just talk,” said Whizzer.

“Don’t he?” Coop asked.

“We been over this,” said D.B.

“We have,” said Whizzer. “Wingate cooked the deck because he wanted to show that guy Jim what’s what, and because he wanted Jim out of the game. Worked, too.”

“I still say it was an honest game,” said D.B.

Whizzer laughed at him.

“Suspicious old boy, ain’t he?” Coop asked Conrad.

“Me?” asked Whizzer.

“You,” said Coop. “Wingate stacked the deck on that guy. The troopers had the dope business fixed with Blackway, back there. Blackway had a secret weapon he used to bust up Scotty and them at the Fort, that time. Somebody came into the Towns on skis that winter and took those Frenchmen. I bet it was the Russians, that time. Everything’s a plot, ain’t it? Whiz probably reckons it was the Young Republicans killed JFK, it was the Young Democrats got together and flew into those buildings in New York.”

“Conspiracies,” said Conrad.

“There you go,” said Coop. “Whiz reckons everything’s a conspiracy.”

“All I do,” said Whizzer, “is look around. Think things over. Use common sense. Try it yourself. See where it gets you. Somebody is pulling the strings. It ain’t me. It ain’t you. Am I wrong about that?”

“You’re not wrong about us,” said Conrad. “You’re wrong because there are no strings.”

“There you go,” said Coop.

“You boys,” said Whizzer, “have got a lot to learn. I’m glad it ain’t any of you’s got to go up against Blackway today.”

“Speaking of which,” said D.B. “I wonder if they’ve caught up with him yet. They might have.”

“No,” said Whizzer. “They won’t do it till it’s dark. They’ll wait for tonight.”

“Not Nate the Great,” said Coop.“He won’t wait. He don’t know how.”

“No, but Les does,” said Whizzer.

“Right,” said D.B. “By himself, that kid just goes in, he just goes for it. Blackway eats him up. Not Les. Les will wait. He’ll wait till it’s right. He knows the tricks. With Les behind him, Nate has a shot.”

“Not by himself, he don’t,” said Coop.“Put Les into it with him? Then, maybe.”

“You could call that a conspiracy, I guess,” said Whizzer. “Couldn’t you?”

Coop laughed. “Okay, Whiz,” he said.

For a moment the men drank their beer in silence. The lateafternoon sun was in the window of the office. It lay in a square on the floor, it lit the dust on the window glass, it lit the dust in the air.

“And then, when it’s over, what?” Conrad asked at last.

“What, for who?” Whizzer asked him. “For Blackway?”

“For Nate and Lester,” said Conrad.

“Oh,” said Whizzer. “Back to loading blocks, it looks like. What else?”

“What have you got them building out there, anyway?” Conrad asked.

“Nothing,” said Whizzer.

“What are they stacking the blocks for, then?”

“Nothing,” said Whizzer.

“Keeping busy,” said D.B.

“Giving them something to do,” said Coop.

“I see,” said Conrad.

“I don’t,” said Coop. “Well, with Les I do. Les is old. He’s about got done. But Nate the Great ain’t. He’s a kid. You put him to work around here, doing one thing and another — and that’s all right, I guess. Far as it goes. But what about when you’re gone? When this place is gone? What does he do then, Nate the Great?”

“Gets a real job,” said D.B.

“How?” asked Coop. “Doing what? He don’t know nothing. He ain’t been no place but here or done nothing but what you gave him to do. What’s it going to be for him?”

“He’ll be fine,” said Whizzer. “He’s a good kid. There’s more to Nate the Great than you know.”

“Maybe there is,” said Coop. “But I don’t see where he fits anymore, is what I’m saying. You know what it is today: You’re either a brain surgeon or you’re drawing welfare.”

“Is that right?” Whizzer asked him. “Which of them is you?”

“Neither,” said Coop. “I don’t mean for me, for us. We had our day. We managed all right. I mean for Nate, for the kids. There ain’t a lot of room for them anymore, it looks like.”

“It’s a conspiracy,” said Conrad.

“It is,” said D.B.

“
Another
conspiracy,” said Coop.

“It damned well is,” said D.B. “But not everything is. That game at Wingate’s, that was a straight game.”

“If you believe that,” said Whizzer, “we’ll tell you another one.”

“Go ahead,” said D.B. “Tell me.”

“Not today,” said Whizzer. He looked over at the case of beer beside Conrad. “It’s by you, ain’t it?” he asked Conrad.

“Not anymore,” Conrad said.

“All gone?” Whizzer asked him.

“We had it,” said Conrad.

“We did?” Coop asked. “That was a light case, then, wasn’t it?”

“Well,” said D.B., “you got to take into account the source.”

“Scotty?” asked Conrad.

“Scotty kind of runs the light-case department,” said Coop.

“Kind of a specialty of his,” said D.B.

“Like bar fighting,” said Coop.

Whizzer finished his beer, set the empty down on the floor beside his cart. The sun had left the window, and the room had grown dark, but none of the four of them moved to turn on a light.

“You know,” Whizzer said, “you don’t have to worry about Nate the Great. He’ll be fine. He can make it on his own. Sure, he can. And if he can’t, well, I expect I’ll be around for a while yet.”

“Good to know,” said D.B.

Whizzer looked at the clock on the wall of the office.

“Fact is,” he said, “it’s probably for the best Scotty brought in a light case. We can’t sit in here drinking all afternoon.”

“We already did,” said Coop.

17

GO WITH ME

Lester drove. He drove the three of them in Blackway’s truck down to where they had left the other vehicle. They bounced along the rough track they had come over on foot hours earlier. Lillian rode between the two men. She looked from one to the other of them, trying to make them out in the shadows. She swayed against them in the dark.

Before, at the camp, following Lester’s shot, they had held Lillian back. They hadn’t let her see. When she started toward where Blackway lay beyond the firelight, Nate had stopped her.

“Stay where you are,” Lester said. “You don’t want to look at this.”

From the roof of the bus, Lester had given Blackway both barrels of Uncle Walt’s goose gun. That close, the blast had struck Blackway as a dense column of buckshot about a foot long. Lester was no sharpshooter, he’d hardly fired the gun before, and he’d been aiming down. Therefore he’d been a little high. The load had hit Blackway at the collarbone. It had taken his head right off his shoulders. The ruined head lay in the shadows at a distance from the rest of Blackway. It had rolled about a yard.

“You want to get that?” Lester asked Nate.

“You get it,” Nate said.

Lillian sat before the fire, keeping it burning while Lester and Nate went to work. They dragged Blackway out of the clearing and into the woods. She could hear them thrashing in the woods. In fifteen minutes they returned, smothered the fire, and got ready to start walking out.

“We’re leaving him here?” Lillian asked.

“It looks like we would, don’t it?” Lester said. “He’s heavy. You want to tote him back to town, you go ahead.”

“What if somebody comes looking for him?”

“Who?”

“What if somebody finds him, though?”

“They won’t,” said Lester. “He won’t last long. Not up here, he won’t. Coyotes, foxes, buzzards, crows, all them. They’ll find him. They’ve found him already. They’ll break him up. In a week there won’t be nothing left of Blackway.”

“That was part of it, wasn’t it?” Lillian asked him. “That was part of it, too. Your plan?”

“Sure,” said Lester. “What did you think? Did you think we were going to lay him out in the parlor in his best suit?”

“No,” said Lillian. “But I didn’t think — I mean, I thought the gun was to scare him off. Not kill him.”

“You knew better,” said Lester. “You can’t scare Blackway off. You knew that. You said it yourself. Blackway don’t scare. He don’t bluff. We told you: If you start with Blackway, you got to be ready to go all the way through.”

“You’re talking about him like he was still alive,” said Lillian.

“Well, he ain’t,” said Lester. “You wish he was?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Lillian.

The truck bounced and bounded over the track, and its headlights flew up into the treetops, then plunged down to the ground in front of them. Now and then a deer or some other animal, pale in their lights, disappeared into the woods ahead.

“Blackway was a bad guy,” said Lester. “He was big around here because there wasn’t nothing he wouldn’t do and he made sure everybody knew it. He got one thing wrong, though. He thought he was the only guy like that. That’s why he walked into our business here tonight. I was pretty sure he would: Blackway never thought nobody would go as far as him. Sometimes, if the worst guy around makes that same mistake, the second worst guy has a chance.”

“The second worst guy, that’s you?” Lillian asked him.

“Not anymore,” said Lester.

When they reached the turnout where they had left Nate’s truck, they stopped. Lester drove on alone in Blackway’s truck, with Nate and Lillian following him in Nate’s, Lillian driving.

“Where are we going?” Lillian asked Nate.

“Leave the truck off, it looks like,” said Nate.

“Where?” Lillian asked.

“Wherever Les thinks,” said Nate.

Nate was hurt in his side, where he had taken Blackway’s boot. He leaned against the door of the truck. He held his side.

“I want to look at that,” said Lillian.

“It ain’t nothing,” said Nate. He nodded ahead. “There he goes.”

Lester was turning off the highway. Lillian followed him. They had come back to the High Line. The long white building lay before them, a pallid hulk. The parking lot was empty. No window showed a light. The place might have been deserted.

Lester stopped Blackway’s truck in front of the High Line, shut off the engine, and joined Nate and Lillian. Lillian moved over beside Nate, and Lester got behind the wheel.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“We’re leaving it here?” Lillian asked.

“Sure,” said Lester. “We got to leave it somewhere. Let Stu and them figure it out.”

At that moment they heard the laughter of the crazy woman coming from one of the rooms.

“
Hee-hee-heee-heeee-eeee
.”

“I’d think they’d shut her up,” said Lester. “They did before.”

“They can’t hear her,” said Lillian. “Nobody hears her. She’s all alone.”

“I guess she is, at that,” said Lester.

They drove out of the High Line lot and got back on the highway, pointed toward home. In the truck Lillian turned to Nate. She wanted to see his side. She switched on the overhead light.

“Take off your shirt,” Lillian told Nate.

“What?”

“Take off your shirt. I want to see where you’re hurt. Come on.”

“It ain’t that bad.”

“Come on,” said Lillian. She helped Nate out of his T-shirt and looked at his side. Nate’s midsection on the left was badly bruised all up and down. Lillian laid her hand on the injured place.

“Does that hurt you?” she asked Nate.

“It ain’t that bad,” said Nate.

Lillian pressed him gently with her hand.

“Ow,” said Nate.

“Leave the boy alone,” said Lester.

“He’s hurt,” said Lillian.

“He’s fine,” said Lester. “He’ll be fine. What he needs is for Nurse Rowena to take a look at it. Nurse Rowena will know just what to do, I expect.”