Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“I did it myself,” Sherman told her. “It started out as kind of a hobby. I bought the land when I was just a kid. It was a few years into the Depression. I was already a cop, so I wasn’t worried about having a job, but I couldn’t afford to buy a house. And what does a man living alone need a house for, anyway? So I thought I’d invest in a piece of land and sell it someday. Like the big shots do, only just this little bit.

“I started out by clearing the land. Coming up here on my days off. I guess that’s when the idea came to me.”

“How long did it take you to finish it?”

“It’s still not finished,” Sherman said, ruefully. “At the rate I’m going, it may never be. But it’s good enough to live in. For me, anyway.”

“Where did you learn how to do all the… things you have to do? To build a house, I mean.”

“I just read about it. At the library. They’ve got books on everything there. Plumbing-you can’t get city water out this far; I’ve got a well-electricity, everything. I didn’t always get it right the first time, but I just kept worrying at it until I solved it.”

“Like one of your cases?”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Sherman said, looking at Ruth with open admiration. “You collect as much information as you can. Then you take whatever you want to test-it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a plumbing line or a theory-and you try it out, see if it’ll hold up.

“You put a lot of pressure on it,” the big man explained. “Work slow and careful. Keep good notes. Check and recheck. Never let your emotions get in the way. Just because you want something to turn out a certain way doesn’t mean it will. If you let what you want… influence you, the whole thing falls down.”

Ruth made a complete circuit of the big room, then seated herself elegantly on a couch made of wide, rough-hewn pine planks, covered with a heavy Indian-pattern blanket.

“How did you learn the carpentry part?” she asked. “Was that from books, too? Or did your father teach you?”

“The only thing my father ever taught me was to fear him,” Sherman Layne said, his voice as quiet as cancer. “Until the day I taught him to fear me.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:47

“What do you mean, ‘find’ me?” Tussy said.

“Would it be enough if I promise to tell you everything?” Dett replied. “Not now, before I leave. If you don’t want to see any more of me until then, I’ll understand. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I thought you were going to take me out again tonight,” she said, making a pouty motion with her mouth.

“I am. I mean, I’ll take you anywhere you want to-”

“You know where I’d like to go? The drive-in. I haven’t been there in a million years. But I looked in the paper this morning, and North by Northwest is playing. I really wanted to see that one.”

“Sure. What time should I-?”

“Well, if we get there by seven-thirty, we’ll have plenty of time to eat and everything.”

“Do you know a place?”

“To eat? No, I mean right there at the drive-in, silly.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Haven’t you ever done that? Eat dinner at a drive-in?”

“I’ve never been.”

“In your whole life?”

“Not even once.”

“Oh, you’ll love it. It’s so much nicer than in a movie theater. Like having the show playing just for you.”

“If you like it so much, how come you don’t go more?”

“It’s really for kids. Or people with kids. For the teenagers around here, the drive-in’s just another place to make out. They wouldn’t care if the screen was blank.”

Dett was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “That tuna was delicious, Tussy. The best I ever had.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. I don’t do that. Just say things, I mean. Every time I have tuna salad, from now on, I’m going to ask for basil on it. And a little piece of parsley on the side.”

“Well, most places have parsley. We serve it at the diner with certain dishes. Like it always comes with the meatloaf. But basil, I don’t know.”

“I can just buy some. In a store, I mean. And take it with me.”

“Oh, people do do that. One old man, he’s a regular, a real sweetheart, flirts with all the girls, he always brings his own bottle of sauce. I don’t know what’s in it, but he puts it on everything. Meat, fish… even eggs. I don’t know if the basil would stay fresh, though.”

“It would if you bought it that same day.”

“I guess it would. But it seems like a lot of trouble.”

“No,” Dett said. “That isn’t trouble.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:56

“Do a lot of people know you live out here?” Ruth asked.

“I’m… not sure. My mail comes to the post office; I’ve got a box there. But this place, it’s not a secret.”

“It doesn’t look like you get a lot of visitors. Or else you have a woman come in and clean for you.”

“I never have visitors,” Sherman said.

“Until me,” Ruth said.

“You’re not a visitor.”

“What am I, then?”

“What you’ve been for a long time,” Sherman Layne said. “The person I trust. The only one.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:57

“You ever get tired of all this?” the man behind the binoculars asked the rifleman.

“This?”

“Waiting. Waiting all the time.”

“Any job there is, there’s always some waiting in it,” the rifleman said.

“You never get bored, just sitting around, doing nothing?”

“What we do, it only takes a couple of seconds,” the rifleman said. “But waiting to do it, that’s part of doing it right.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:04

“Would you like to see my garden?” Tussy asked. “You couldn’t have seen much in the dark, last night.”

“Yes,” Dett said, getting to his feet.

Tussy led him out the back door. She pointed to a neat square of plowed and furrowed earth. “My mother started it,” she said, “before I was even born. That parsley you had? I grew it right here. I’ve got fresh carrots, onions, radishes, all kinds of vegetables. Better than anything you could buy in the store. My dad always said he was going to put a beehive back there. One of those you build yourself. We’d have fresh honey then, too. But Mom said she wasn’t going to have a bunch of bees buzzing around her every time she went outside.”

Fireball left the house, moving slowly and purposefully.

“He’s playing like he’s stalking a bird,” Tussy said. “He hasn’t caught one since my thirteenth birthday. He brought it home. For me, like a present. I cried and cried. My dad explained it was just him being a cat-he couldn’t help himself. But I think he-Fireball, I mean-I think he understood how upset he’d made me, because he never brought one home again.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:09

“Is there a basement?” Ruth asked.

“Well… no. The foundation is really just some big pieces of rock I hauled myself.”

“Oh. And the garage, it doesn’t have heat, does it?”

“The garage? No. It’s all wired, for when I have to see what I’m doing when I work on my car, or put some project together, but you wouldn’t want to go out there in the winter without your coat.”

“It’s all so… open in here.”

“You don’t like it, Ruth?”

“I love it. It’s beautiful, Sherman. I was just looking for a place where you could… build me something?”

“Build you… I don’t understand.”

“Like in my blue room,” she said, looking him squarely in the face. “Only right here.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:11

“You sure I’m the man you want with you for this, Mickey?”