Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

Aloud, Mitch said, “Ah, for Christ’s sake.” He tossed his cigarette into the bay, coiled up the hose, put his tools away, and climbed off onto the float. He went straight from the cannery pier across the highway and up the hill to the trailer encampment.

First trailer he came to was Hod’s. Run-down old white thing with a green lattice border around the bottom and a cheap canvas awning rigged on one side-hell of a place for a man to have to live with a wife and three kids. He felt for Hod, losing his boat the way he had; but he felt for himself, too, and more. Six mouths to feed in another couple of months, not just five. And now this Ryerson coming around and threatening to have him arrested for something he hadn’t done. Jesus Christ!

Hod’s two boys, Tad and Jason, were tossing a half-flat football back and forth in the weeds out back. In front his oldest, Mandy, was sitting in the sun in a canvas-backed chair with her Sunday dress hiked up so far on her thighs you could damn near see her twat. She didn’t pull it down when he came by, either. Pretty little tease. Get herself knocked up for sure one of these days, just like Hod was always predicting.

“If you’re looking for my dad, Mr. Novotny, he’s back at Adam’s trailer.”

“Looking for Adam, thanks.”

“Sure is a nice day, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t catch a draft.”

She knew what he meant; she grinned at him bold as hell. Good thing he was Hod’s friend. Good thing he wasn’t the kind to chase around after tail, young or old… even with Marie all swollen the way she was and not wanting him to touch her in the last couple of months. A man could get himself in a lot of bad trouble over one like Mandy Barnett.

He went on past the other trailers, to the small humped old house trailer that Adam lived in. Adam had built a workshed on one side of it and a kind of covered areaway made out of wood and tin that connected it with the trailer. There was a table under the areaway, and some chairs, and Hod and Adam were sitting there with bottles of Henry’s, playing cribbage and listening to the 49er game on the radio.

Adam said, “Hey, Mitch. You want to sit in on a little crib?”

“No.”

“Beating me as usual,” Hod complained. “’Niners are winning, though. How about a beer?”

“No.” Mitch’s hands were steady now; the walk up here had put him back in control again. He said, “Ryerson just showed up down at the Spindrift. Says somebody shot up his car with a rifle last night. Did two hundred dollars’ worth of damage.”

Hod said, “The hell!” Adam didn’t say anything; he had his eyes on the cards he was shuffling.

“Accused me of it,” Mitch told them. “Said if it ever happened again he’d call in the sheriff and have me arrested.”

“You do it, Mitch?” Hod asked. “Shoot up his car?”

“Hell no, I didn’t do it.” He said his next words to Hod, too, but he was looking at Adam. “You go out on the cape last night with Adam? After deer?”

“No. Overcast breaking up and all that moonlight… just didn’t seem like a good idea.”

“How about you, Adam? You go out?”

Adam popped the cards down on the table, got up in that bouncy way of his. “I went out. No damn deer, though.”

“What’d you take? That thirty-ought-six of yours? The one with the scope sight?”

Adam hopped around a little, let out a breath, and then said, “All right, Mitch, I done it. I put a couple of rounds in Ryerson’s car.”

“Well what the hell for?”

“I didn’t plan it. It was just there wasn’t any deer and it got me frustrated. I was out near the lighthouse, nobody around, that big Ford station wagon sitting there in the moonlight… hell, I don’t know. I remembered what you said Friday night and it just seemed like the thing to do.”

“What I said?”

“About not letting Ryerson get away with murdering Red. About making him pay for it.”

“I didn’t mean by shooting up his goddamn car!”

“What’d you mean, then?”

“I don’t know, not yet. But nothing like that.”

“Hell, Mitch, I’m sorry. I only meant it as a favor to you. I liked Red too, you know that.”

“Yeah.”

“I just never figured he’d come down on you for it.”

“Suppose he changes his mind, decides to sic the sheriff on me? Or tries to sue me for the damages? What then, Adam?”

Adam was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he said, “That ain’t going to happen. None of it.”

“Oh it ain’t?”

“No. Ryerson can’t do nothing to you for what happened to his car, any more’n you can do anything to him for killing Red. Not legally. He’s got no proof who fired those rounds last night. If there was anything he could do, it’d have been the sheriff talking to you this morning, not him.”

“Maybe,” Mitch said, but he wasn’t so sure.

“If he did swear out a complaint against you,” Hod said, “you could do the same thing to him, couldn’t you?” He’d been watching with round eyes and looking nervous. Hod was always nervous when things shifted off an even keel. “On account of Red, I mean?”

“No. I already told you the sheriff said I couldn’t.”

“Well, couldn’t you sue him for false arrest or something? You could get Gus Brooks, up in Bandon. He’s the best lawyer on the coast.”

“Hod, you talk like a man with a paper asshole. I can’t afford to hire Gus Brooks or any other goddamn lawyer. I can’t afford to get arrested or go to court or miss any damn time at all out on the boat. I can’t hardly make ends meet as it is.”

“Ryerson don’t have time for it either,” Adam said. “He’s out there writing some book-got a year to do it and no more. He ain’t going to make trouble no matter what happens. Putting the sheriff or some lawyer on you don’t buy him nothing but headaches he don’t want.”

Mitch didn’t say anything. He was still mad as hell, but now he didn’t know who he was mad at. Yes he did: it wasn’t Adam, it was Ryerson more than ever. Adam was his friend; Ryerson was a damn radical from California who’d murdered Red just because Red nipped him a little. Adam was stupid sometimes and didn’t use good sense; Ryerson was a dog-murdering son of a bitch.

“Whole damn year of him out at the light,” Mitch said finally. “Sitting out there all high and mighty, killing a man’s dog when he feels like it, threatening people. It ain’t right.”

“No,” Hod said, “but what’s there to do about it?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what?”

“Like send him to hell back to California. Pry his ass out of the lighthouse before this year’s out.”

“You mean force him to leave?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“How you going to do that without him running to the law?”

“There are ways,” Adam said. He looked relieved that Mitch wasn’t pissed at him anymore. “Ain’t there, Mitch?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “There are ways.”

Jan left for Portland at eight o’clock Tuesday morning. Even though there had been no repetition of the shooting incident, no trouble of any kind, he’d seemed reluctant to leave her alone at the lighthouse. It had crossed her mind that in spite of what he claimed, he didn’t really believe it was kids who had been responsible, that he thought it had something to do with the accidental death of Mitch Novotny’s dog and was afraid of further reprisals. But when she voiced the thought to him, he had only repeated what the county sheriff had told him: This was the country; youngsters were made familiar with firearms at an early age, and unfortunately they sometimes misused their weapons by plinking at signs, buildings, even automobiles, in much the same way their urban counterparts spray-painted walls and subway cars. She preferred that explanation herself, rather than believe it was malicious mischief on the part of a grown man or men who ought to know better, and had let the matter drop. She wasn’t afraid to stay alone. And she had enough on her mind as it was-those headaches of Jan’s above all-without cluttering it even more with vague fears that their neighbors were out to get them.