Russell Banks - Affliction

He was not dressed for the weather, they thought; he wore no gloves or boots, but that was consistent with his story about his car’s having broken down and his having to hitch a ride into town to meet his wife, who apparently had her own car. He seemed more than cold, however, and huddled shivering in the back of the warm Bronco like a man who was terrified of something. Like a man who had seen a ghost, was the phrase both men used.

When they pulled into the parking lot at Toby’s Inn, a guy in a dump truck was plowing, and Wade ducked his head and turned deliberately away from the guy, as if he did not want to be seen by him. He hung back in the car when the others got out, and they thought at first that he had changed his mind about having a drink with them, so they asked him again to join them. He mumbled, “Maybe one,” and slowly got out of the truck, hunkering his head down behind his collar, as if still hiding from the man plowing out the lot, but then suddenly he said no, and without saying so much as thank you or goodbye, walked straight toward the plowman and climbed up inside the truck as if they had agreed to meet there.

What the deer hunters did not realize is that they had parked beside a burgundy 4x4 pickup truck, a fancy new vehicle with the rear bumper half torn off, and that when they went into the dark pine-paneled bar and restaurant, the young good-looking kid they saw at the bar, talking wildly to a couple of young women and two or three local men about some nut chasing him through the woods, was Jack Hewitt. Nor did it occur to them that the nut who had chased him was the gray-faced trembling man they had just let off outside. They took a booth, ordered “Toby-burgers” and beers, and studied with optimistic envy the stuffed and mounted heads of antlered deer and moose hanging on the walls. Tomorrow, by Saturday at the latest, they were sure they would have their own trophies strapped to the roof of the Bronco, racing back south to Lynn, Massachusetts, where they knew a taxidermist over in Saugus who could stuff a whole deer, if you got it to him quickly enough, could mount it in a lifelike re-creation of the way it looked at the very instant you shot it, hind feet kicking the air, white tail flagged, eyes wild with terror and pain, and you could put it in your basement recreation room if you wanted to.

Wade yanked shut the door of the dump truck and said, “You headed back to town now?”

“Yep. I’m headed to the shop. Want a lift to the shop?” Jimmy asked. He shoved half a cubic yard of packed snow hard against the head-high bank at the end of the parking lot, banged the truck into reverse, lifted the plow and backed away from the snowbank and stopped.

“No. Wickham’s.”

“Margie over there?”

“Yeah. And my old man,” Wade added.

“Thought he was going out with you in Gordon’s pickup.”

“She brought him in with her.”

“You cold? Heater’s on full blast.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Heard about you chasing Jack over-the backside of Parker Mountain.”

Wade was silent. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. Then, like a child, he put his fingers into his mouth and sucked them.

Jimmy moved the truck out onto the road and dropped the plow again and headed south into town, scudding the un-plowed snow on the right lane off the road. “You got folks pretty scared, Wade. And pissed. More pissed than scared, actually. Jack, I mean he’s wicked bullshit.”

“I expect so.”

“What the hell did Jack do, to get you on his case so hard? He’s a decent kid. A little bit cocky, maybe, but—”

“He happen to tell you what he was doing up there tonight?”

“He might’ve. It wasn’t so bad; maybe just looking to jack himself a deer was all. Not something to chase him all over the damn county for. Considering.”

“Jacking deer, eh? He said that?”

“Might’ve. Maybe he was just checking tracks, for later. You know, when he gets his license back. He knows them woods pretty good up there; maybe he was just checking out some deer trails in the fresh snow, see if his big ol’ buck was still up there.”

“Maybe he was up to something a little more interesting than that.”

“Well, it don’t matter a rat’s ass to me. You’re the cop, you can do the worrying about who does what and where and when. All that. Course, it’s none of my beeswax, Wade, but if I was you, I’d cool it on Jack for a spell. Gordon’s going to—”

“Just drive, for Christ’s sake.”

“Okeydokey.”

They rode in silence for a ways, past the school, past Merritt’s Shell Station, and as they entered the village center, a few hundred yards from Wickham’s, Wade said, “Jack tell you about Gordon’s truck going through the ice?”

Jimmy whistled a single long descending note. “Well, no, Wade, he did not. He did say you was out on the ice, said he had to pull a fucking gun on you to back you off him.” He paused, then said, “Gordon’s truck went through, eh?”

Wade did not answer.

“Guess it’s still too early for ice fishing.”

“Yeah.”

“You know Gordon’s going to want your ass in a sling for this one. If I was you, Wade, I’d move to Florida. Tonight.”

“But you’re not.”

“Nope, I’m not. Thank Christ.”

“You think Gordon knows yet?”

“Wade, you’re the only one to tell it, and so far, it looks like nobody but me knows. Unless they heard it from you. Except for the business about chasing Jack around the fucking mountain, and by now probably everybody in Toby’s knows that part of the story. If I was you, Wade, I wouldn’t tell Gordon about this in person. Course, I’m not you. Like you said. But I‘d let him find out on his own, let him blow his stack for a while, and then come around later, when he’s cooled off some.”

They pulled into Wickham’s parking lot, where there were only a few cars, including Margie’s gray Rabbit. What Wade should do, Jimmy said, was stay out of sight for a few days. Don’t even answer the phone. He himself would go down and get the truck out of the pond in the morning. “Can I get in there with Merritt’s tow truck? If I can do that, I can put the winch on her and yank the fucker out from the shore.”

Wade said he thought Merritt’s truck could get into the pond from Route 29 on the old lumber trail. He would not have to come down from the top.

Jimmy said fine, he would break the news to LaRiviere himself, after he got the pickup safely into Merritt’s garage, and Chub Merritt would probably have it running by Monday. “Slicker’n shit. That Chub, he’s clever as a sheep when it comes to cars. Dumb as a stick otherwise.”

Wade had stopped trembling by now. “I guess I owe you one, Jimmy.”

Jimmy grinned. “I guess you do. But don’t worry, I’ll be putting my time in. Overtime.”

“Yeah,” Wade said. “That’s all that matters to you, isn’t

it?”

“Nope. But it’s enough to think about, ol’ buddy. Keeps a fellow out of trouble.”

Margie was angry. She looked up at Wade when he came in, stared at him for a second as if he were a stranger who reminded her of someone she once knew, and went directly back to filling the napkin holders. Nick hollered from the kitchen, “We’re closed!” then, peering out the open door, saw that it was Wade who had entered and said, “Your father’s back here, Wade”

And indeed he was. The fire was in his face, and the small shriveled man was now taut and reckless with energy. Wade knew instantly what had happened: Pop had stopped drinking several hours earlier: no doubt, when Margie took him from the house and brought him into work with her, she had insisted that he leave his bottle of whiskey behind. Then he had not been able to locate anything more to drink at Nick’s, and because of the cold and the snow earlier, had been forced to stay there in the kitchen with Nick, and slowly, like charcoal igniting at the edges and spreading into the center, he had started to burn, and now he glowed red, as if he were indeed, as Lena believed, possessed by a demon.