Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

Savard went closer, circled the stump, then without thinking, pulled the cord and raised his saw-a heavy Black amp; Decker four-footer-and gave it a little more definition between the head and shoulder. Almost too much: he went at the snout with more finesse, narrowing it, then rounded off that big muscle pad behind the neck. He stepped back for a better look-terrible.

But he’d gotten the bug, and the next Saturday he drove home with ten foot of cedar, most of it sticking out the back of the Bronco. White cedar, specifically: he’d always liked the soft, sunny glow hiding under its sappy skin. Savard had floated his log across the water to the cabin, dragged it up to the door with the ATV he’d had then-one of those little things he’d thought would please his second wife; she’d ridden it once-and humped it through the door.

The carving had taken a year. By the end of that time he’d settled on the right tool-an electric Stihl 14, only four pounds or so, delicate enough for eyes, claws, nostrils-and had learned the most important lesson: to let the wood guide the saw. His first bear was man-size and stood by itself on its hind legs, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking it was anything but crude. There was just one good thing about bear number one: it had that poker face that makes bears so dangerous. Savard brought back a new tree trunk the next week to see if the poker face had been an accident.

Savard didn’t finish bear number two, if finishing meant carving a complete bear down to the ground; in fact, he never attempted another complete bear. He’d gotten the second bear’s poker face almost right away-this one was even more ambiguous, if that was the word-and was sawing his slow way down to the chest when he lost focus. As he worked, he began to find himself watching not the side of the chain where the bear was emerging, but the other side, the tree side. For no reason, he decided to make bear number two half-bear, half-tree. There was a… relationship between the bear and the tree, a complicated one, not especially pleasing to either of them, if that made any sense. It took Savard four months to reach that point with the second bear. Bear three began the next Saturday.

By now Savard had lost track of the number of bears he’d carved with his chain saw. Many had ended up in the woodstove, making floor space for new bears. Not that anyone looking at the recent ones would have identified them as bears. Savard was interested in only two things now: the struggle, if you could call it that, between the bear and the tree, and the pokeriness, if that was a word, of the face, even though there no longer was anything resembling a face. Struggle and pokeriness, his terminology for what he was doing with the bears. It didn’t have to make sense because he never discussed it with anyone. No one else ever came inside the cabin; no one else had ever seen them.

Savard lit the woodstove, dragged the floor lamp-the only piece of furniture in the place-into position, switched it on. He surveyed his latest bear, a big one because the trunk was big: old, slow-growth cedar, with thin-spaced rings and a grain that felt like satin. His latest bear-a massive, twisting shape, almost too massive to be able to twist, but it did-locked in combat with some force in the wood. He knew the force was real, having felt it through the saw. Strapping on his Kevlarlined chaps-he’d had over thirty stitches in his legs by now, didn’t want more-he filed the teeth and rakers in the chain as sharp as he could get them, put on his headphones. In the beginning he’d kept his ears uncovered, lost in the sound-much quieter than a gas-powered saw, but still whining and buzzing nastily as metal turned wood to dust. Later, noticing that his hearing wasn’t as sharp as it had been, he’d worn protection. Now he preferred music, Django Reinhardt specifically. That was the way he worked: Paris singing in his ears-he’d never been to Paris, never been anywhere, really, except Vietnam, but Paris must have been something like Django’s music, if it wasn’t still-Paris singing in his ears, the saw throbbing in his hands, sawdust shooting through the yellow pool of lamplight, swirling past the blazing windows that faced the setting sun.

Joe Savard worked all night. When dawn came, and the east side windows lit up, first milky, then butter-colored, he saw what he had seen so many times before, that he’d only made things worse. Still, as in all those other times, he felt good just the same. Hard to explain. A feeling kids get when they stand in a doorway pressing their arms against the jambs, then quickly step free, arms levitating by themselves, as though weightless; a feeling like that, but all over.

A good feeling, followed by ravenous hunger. Savard closed up and drove to Lavinia’s, a diner he liked a few miles up 101. Black coffee, bacon and scrambled eggs, side of hash browns. While he waited for his order he asked for a phone book. He found a listing for the Little White Church of the Redeemer in Lawton Ferry, on the eastern border of his territory.

Food came. He ate it all, almost ordered the same again; would have, even a year or two ago. But he was up to 220, and that was the limit.

“How about a blueberry muffin, Joe?” asked Lavinia. “Baked personally in the oven of yours truly.”

No refusal possible. He ate the muffin, but without honey, even though he was very fond of honey.

“I like appetite in a man,” Lavinia said, clearing his plate, refilling his cup.

“Sure you do,” Savard said. “You own a restaurant.”

She gave him a look, a complicated one that he didn’t meet for more than a second. He had no desire to get closer to Lavinia. Not true: he had a strong desire to get closer to Lavinia, but only once or twice, and that wasn’t for him.

Savard drank up, paid his bill, leaving a bigger tip than usual, and was halfway out the door when he paused, then went back inside and picked up the pay phone. He dialed the Little White Church of the Redeemer.

“You have reached the house of God. No one is here to take your call right now.”

Savard left a message after the tone.

“Ah, right on the dot,” said Roger, standing beneath the statue of George Washington, Sunday at ten. “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings.”

“It is?” said Whitey, red-eyed, yellow-faced, blue-lipped, rumpled, as though he’d spent the night drinking and then slept, or passed out, in his car. But he didn’t have a car, and where had he slept, come to think of it? An unknown factor, quite certainly inconsequent; still, it was a relief to remember that Whitey wouldn’t be around much longer.

“Just an expression,” Roger explained, at the same time calculating with some precision the time remaining to Whitey-thirty-three hours, at most, thirty-two and a half, at least. A romantic concept, in a way: hadn’t innumerable potboilers been based on the conceit of a character given only a short, fixed time to live? Although not, Roger thought, a character like this. He found himself smiling at Whitey.

“Never heard of it,” Whitey said. Not a conventionally likable character, but a character nonetheless, in his silly leather jacket and pointy cowboy boots, beyond vulgar.

“No matter. How about some coffee?”

“Now you’re talkin’,” said Whitey.

They walked out of the Public Garden, waited for the light to change. Just as it did, Roger caught sight of a large, well-dressed family coming out of the Ritz across the street: an unmatronly mother with upswept blond hair, two tall young adults, some teenagers, one smaller child, and then the father. Something familiar about the father, and in that instant, Roger said, “Go.”

“Huh?” said Whitey.

There were people in front of them, blocking at least their lower selves from view. Roger ground his heel on the toe of Whitey’s cowboy boot. “Fast. Be back in one hour.”