Russell Banks - Affliction

But they had wanted to play cat and mouse with him, go through routines designed to make him think everything was normal, that Jack was, as usual, both stubborn and impetuous and LaRiviere was easily pissed off and quickly forgiving. If Wade had said, “Sorry, Gordon, I’m not plowing tonight,” LaRiviere simply would have called down to Toby’s Inn, Wade knew, and asked for Jack. He imagined the two of them talking about it, LaRiviere in his office, Jack on the wall phone in the dark hallway that led from the bar to the men’s room in back.

LaRiviere: “He didn’t buy it. He’s onto us.”

Jack: “Shit! What are we going to do?”

LaRiviere: “I don’t know. Maybe I can buy him off. I’ll have to talk to Mel Gordon.”

Jack: “Shit! You can’t buy Wade off.”

LaRiviere: “We bought you.”

Jack: “Wade Whitehouse is not Jack Hewitt.”

LaRiviere: “Yeah, well, I still got to get the roads plowed tonight. So get back here and take out the fucking grader.”

Jack: “Shit! The grader?”

LaRiviere: “That’s right, the grader.”

Jack: “Shit!”

A second time, Wade hollered for his father. Still no answer. And then he saw the note on the kitchen table, next to one of the two place settings: Wade, I had to leave for work. Thanks for being on time. Don’t worry, I have Pop with me. Come pick him up at Nick’s when you get home. Supper is in the oven for you both. Margie.

Despite the evidence of Margie’s anger, Wade was relieved by her note. He stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket, and when he stepped out to the porch, he saw headlights flash past, a 4x4 pickup with its plow in the air, and although it was moving fast, Wade instantly recognized the vehicle: it was Jack’s burgundy Ford, leaving high snowy fantails behind it as it passed the house without slowing and disappeared at the curve, heading uphill toward Parker Mountain.

Wade climbed up into the driver’s seat of LaRiviere’s blue Dodge and started the motor, listened to the throaty rumble of the mufflers for a few seconds and flicked on the headlights, splashing a field of white over the yard. Then, with the plow up, he drove slowly out to the road, where, instead of turning left and downhill toward town, he turned right and started following Jack’s tracks in the fresh snow. There were no side roads off this road out here, except for the lumber trails that crisscrossed through the woods, and no houses beyond the Whitehouse place, except for a few closed-up summer cabins and, back in the woods, a couple of hunting camps, like LaRiviere’s, on the near side of the mountain. It made no sense for Jack to be out here tonight.

Driving fast now, but not too fast, because he did not want to overtake Jack suddenly if he stopped or slowed, Wade peered through the lightly falling snow for the lights of Jack’s truck. He shut down his own running lights and used the low beams, hoping that Jack was not looking back in his mirror: he wondered if Jack had noticed him standing there on the porch when he passed the house. If not, then Jack had no reason to think anyone was following him.

Suddenly, as Wade came over a low rise where the road dropped and ran between a pair of low frozen marshes, he saw Jack’s truck a hundred yards ahead of him, and he hit the brakes, went into a short slide, and came to a halt. Jack was outside the truck and had been standing a few feet into the bushes beyond the snowbank, but he had seen Wade and was scrambling back into his truck now. He slammed the door shut and drove quickly on.

Wade pulled back onto the road and slowly moved ahead and stopped just behind where Jack had been parked, illuminating his tire tracks and footprints with the headlights. He could see that Jack had gone beyond the spot twenty or thirty feet, had stopped his truck and backed up, and had got out and walked around on the side of the road by the snowbank. Very peculiar, Wade thought. What the hell was he looking for? Incriminating evidence? Shell casings? Was this the scene of the crime? The woods beyond the frozen marsh on both sides of the road were dark and impenetrable. Wade knew the land rose abruptly just beyond the woods and that he was in a draw between a pair of long ridges that ran off the mountain toward Saddleback: there was nothing to see from here, except woods, even during the day.

Puzzled, he put the truck in gear and drove on, moving faster now and not as cautiously as before, because he knew Jack had spotted him, although he probably had not identified the truck as LaRiviere’s. Still, Jack might be trying to elude him: there was no more reason for Wade or anyone else to be out here on a Thursday night than there was for Jack, unless you happened to be pursuing Jack.

Which Wade now knew he was indeed doing, pursuing Jack. He switched on the running lights and his high beams and turned on the CB scanner, in case Jack was using it— whom would he call? LaRiviere? Mel Gordon? — and pressed down on the accelerator, moving swiftly and skillfully through power slides on the curves, the plow blade rising and falling out in front of the truck, like the steel prow of a boat in a storm, when the road dipped and pitched and rose again, higher each time, as it neared the top of Parker Mountain.

It had stopped snowing altogether now — Jimmy was right: it was too cold to snow — and Wade could see clearly ahead of him. The tracks of Jack’s truck still extended out there in front of him, but he saw no lights in the distance: it was as if Jack had passed by an hour ago and not mere seconds; as if Wade were out here on the mountain road alone; as if he had made the whole thing up, had not seen Jack pass by his house and had not come upon his truck parked by the side of the road back there at the marshes, had not seen him hustle back into the truck and race away. There was nowhere to go up here. The road would gradually narrow, and just this side of the crest it would pass LaRiviere’s cabin. Then, on the other side of the mountain, where the land descended through dense spruce and pine woods toward a spatter of small shallow ponds and lakes, the road would turn into a lumber trail switchbacking down the mountain, connecting eventually to Route 29, ten or twelve miles south of Lawford, where the road crossed under the interstate through a cloverleaf.

A few hundred yards before LaRiviere’s cabin, Wade slowed and cut back his lights again, relying only on his low beams, and as he neared the turnoff by the muskeg in front of the cabin, the very place where Jack had parked the day he shot Twombley, where the ambulance and Asa Brown and the state troopers had parked, he saw Jack’s truck, backed off the road on the left, with all its lights out, ready to head out and blow by him. Fifty yards from the muskeg, Wade moved his truck over slightly to the left and filled the road, so Jack could not pass him when he pulled back onto the road — when suddenly Jack’s truck seemed to leap onto the road. But it turned the other way, toward the top of the mountain, full speed, with all its lights on.

Wade hit the gas pedal, and his tires spun, and the truck jumped to speed, and now the pair of trucks were separated by only a few yards, as they raced along the narrow winding road, up to the top of the mountain, flashing past the low stunted trees that grew up here, and then they were over the top, beyond the road. They were on the rocky switchbacking lumber trail, scrambling and leaping downhill, into gulleys and back out, lurching from side to side as the trail twisted and pitched through fallen trees and great heaps of brush. Both trucks were four-wheel-drive vehicles with oversized snow tires, their chassis kicked high with extra-long shackles, and they navigated the difficult terrain rapidly and with relative ease, though at this speed it was dangerous, and they had to dart out of the way as huge snow-covered boulders and tree stumps suddenly appeared out of the darkness before them. With the plows out in front slashing through the brush, the trucks lurched rapidly downhill, and soon they were in deep woods again, and the slope was not so steep. Where the trail switched to avoid a deep gully, Jack braked, and Wade clipped the rear bumper of Jack’s truck with his plow and sent the vehicle spinning to the edge of the gully. Somehow, Jack regained control of it, the wheels crunched into the frozen soil, tossing clods of dirt and snow into the air, and he was gone again, racing ahead, with Wade drawing up right behind, his plow just a few feet from the dangling bumper of Jack’s truck.