James Burke - Swan Peak

“That’s silly,” she said.

But after Troyce left, she realized the actor was looking at her with a faint smile while he pretended to listen to the conversation going on around him. He set his glass down and approached her table. She studied the tops of her hands. When she looked up again the actor was standing two feet from her, his fingers resting on the back of Troyce’s empty chair.

“I wondered if you and your friend would like to join us,” he said.

“We just ordered dinner,” she replied.

“After you eat, come over to the bar for a drink.”

He was of medium height but extremely handsome in the way that some men can be handsome without trying, his dark hair freshly barbered, his skin clear, his dress shirt and gray slacks loose on his athletic frame.

“Thank you, but we just came here to eat.” She glanced toward the doorway that led into the truck stop. “We’re probably not staying long.”

“You ought to. They got a great band. There’s a guy sitting in with them who’s really good.”

“Thanks for the invitation. We’re just going to eat.”

“You ever do any film work?”

“No. I don’t know anything about it.”

“I’d like to talk to you about it. Your friend, too. He’s got an unusual face. Was he in an accident of some kind?”

“I’m a cook. Listen, I love your movies, but you’re talking to the wrong person.” She tried to smile. She looked toward the entrance to the truck stop again. “I think my friend is coming back with our food.”

“It’s nice meeting you,” the actor said. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Candace. Excuse me, I got to go to the restroom.”

“Where do you live?”

“In a motel up the road. No, I’m kidding. Troyce and me own half of Beverly Hills. We eat in dumps like this for kicks.”

“If you change your mind, Candace, we’ll be at the bar. I’m not hitting on you. I meant what I said.”

When Candace returned from the restroom, her heart was still pounding. Troyce was sitting at the table, a foaming pitcher and two glasses in front of him.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” he said.

“About what?”

“That guy had his eye on you.”

“He wanted to invite us for a drink. He said maybe both of us could work in films. I think he was just being a nice guy, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” he said, grinning. “What’d you tell him?”

“That we were having dinner. You’re not gonna do anything, are you?”

“You know better than that,” he said playfully. “I ordered your steak medium well done, with a baked potato and double melted butter and a salad with buttermilk dressing. That’s what you wanted, right?”

But she realized she didn’t know better than that. In his dreams, Troyce traveled to places she could never enter, and he saw things and heard sounds inside closed rooms that she refused to let herself think about. When she watched the news about a distant war where American soldiers trudged through biscuit-colored villages blown with flies and garbage, she tried to imagine Troyce as one of them, brave, uncomplaining, his uniform stiff with salt, his skin gray with dust, like a Roman legionnaire coming out of a sandstorm. But all she could think of was Troyce in a closed room while a man with a towel wrapped around his face was being drowned.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the actor take a mixed drink from the bartender and place it in the hand of a windburned, dark-featured man who wore jeans and a denim jacket and whose unshaved face was the same as that of the man in the jailhouse photo that Troyce carried in his billfold. Her beer glass trembled in her hand.

“That fellow eyeballing you again?” Troyce said.

“No,” she said, taking his wrist, keeping his eyes on hers. “Troyce, let’s go over to the Cascades. We can stop for the night in Coeur d’Alene and go on in the morning. I’ll show you the place where we can start up our café. We can have a good life there.”

“I declare if you’re not a puzzle,” he replied.

WITHOUT TROYCE NIX’Sever noticing, a diesel-powered fire-engine-red pickup truck with oversize tires and headlights that sparkled had followed him from the motel to the club. Now the driver of the pickup sat in the cab in the parking lot, gazing through the windshield at the front of the club, wondering about his next move. The driver was wearing neatly pressed navy blue work pants and a wide belt with a big chrome buckle and a magenta shirt that changed colors in the light. He also wore a black vest, with a silk back, like a nineteenth-century gunfighter or a riverboat gambler might wear. He had shaved and gotten a haircut that afternoon and had showered and washed his hair. He had put on a Resistol hat and a new pair of Acme pointy-toed boots. Looking at himself in the mirror before he left his garage apartment on the Wellstone estate, he hardly recognized his reflection. He had drawn all his money out of the bank and had put eight one-hundred-dollar bills in his wallet, clipped by a chain onto his belt. He had also dropped a clasp knife with a hooked blade for cutting thick twine into his trouser pocket.

Somehow, in surrendering himself to the deeds he was about to commit, Quince Whitley had discovered he possessed a persona he had never thought would be his, namely that of a Mississippi farm boy who had become the debonair scourge of God. That thought caused a surge in his blood that was like his first time with a black girl, way back when it was exciting, back before he stopped keeping count.

“Getting your ashes hauled tonight?” Lyle Hobbs had asked him.

Quince had just finished combing his hair. He blew the dandruff out of the comb’s leather case and slipped the comb inside. “That’s one way to put it. Except the lady doesn’t necessarily know what’s on her dance card yet,” Quince had said.

In the silence, Lyle had seemed to look at Quince in a different light.

Now Quince sat tapping his hands on the steering wheel, staring whimsically at the split-log facade of the club and the strings of tiny white lights that framed the windows and the dark shadow of the mountain that lifted into the sky just beyond the rear of the building. He could hear the music of a country band, a clatter of dishware, and a balloon of voices when a door opened and closed. He could play the situation several ways, but he knew Quince Whitley’s time had come around at last, and all the people who had hurt him, including that burned freak and his wife up at Swan Lake, were going to get their buckwheats. You just don’t dump on a Whitley, bubba, whether it’s in Mississippi or Montana or Blow Me, North Dakota.

He removed a twenty-five-caliber automatic from under the dashboard and Velcro-strapped it to his right ankle. From under the seat he removed a small brown plastic-capped bottle of sulfuric acid, wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief, and slipped it into his pants pocket. Then he walked around behind the club and entered through the back door so he could sit in a dark area where the bar curved into the wall and watch the band and the dancers on the floor and the people eating at the tables in the front of the building.

TROYCE WAS ENJOYINGhis T-bone, forking meat and french fries into his mouth with his left hand. He drank from his beer and winked at Candace. “Don’t be worrying, little darlin’. People like us is forever,” he said.

“You’re willful and hardheaded, Troyce.”

“If you don’t find your enemies, your enemies will find you.”

“My father’s nickname was Smilin’ Jack. He had impractical dreams. He thought he was gonna find gold in the Cascades,” she said.

“Yeah?” Troyce said, not understanding.