David Gates - Preston Falls

Calvin says, "You don't listen."

Time to rock and roll.

Willis stops by the house to have a last look-see. And maybe take five absolutely essential books. Ten, tops. He sits at the kitchen table, gets his film can out and snorts a little off the point of Jean's potato peeler in order to maintain — shit already looks like it's half gone — then goes upstairs and looks under the bed for his.22, not that this is necessarily the best idea, since he's technically on drugs. Though it's weird to think of this as being on drugs. Well, he can't find the fucking.22 anyway, so that settles that. Until he remembers he never took the son of a bitch out of the truck.

He turns out the light, comes back downstairs, sees the stacks of books in the hall and decides to bag the desert-island shit. He turns out the hall light, goes into the kitchen and considers starting coffee. But he can stop somewhere for coffee. He's got a thousand dollars: ten big old hundred-dollar bills with wise old Ben Franklin looking like he's about to deliver a fucking maxim. Okay, you could look at it that Willis got boned, big time. But in fact Calvin got boned, too, because Calvin Castleman is a fucking worldling like Ben Franklin, and the guitars and the roofing slates and the thousands of dollars he stands to make are just that much more shit to lug around spiritually.

He noses the truck out into the road, looks left, looks right, then glances back at the house a last time and sees one of the eyebrow windows — second from left, his fucking study — dully glowing as if some happy, stupefied family were in there, passing the popcorn. The fucking computer. Just because he feels like it, he tromps on the parking brake, gets out of the truck, tilts the seat-back forward and takes his.22 out. Yep, clip's in it. He jerks the bolt, chambering a round and cocking the son of a bitch, and it suddenly feels lighter and very very touchy, as if it's alive. What it is, he's scared shitless of guns. He tries to get the crosshairs

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on the eyebrow window, but the thing's waggling all around, so he ends up resting the gun on the hood of the truck. He finds the window in the scope, gets the crosshairs sort of circling around the middle of it. Everything jumps as he fires, but he hears the glass smash and shimmer, then looks and sees he got the job done. That tv glow is still glowing— what did he expect, to shoot out the window and the monitor? — but he's made his little statement. Now let's get gone.

He pretends it's not safe to go his usual way, that the police have set up a roadblock, that kind of shit, so he goes left out the driveway and follows Ragged Hill Road all the way to the Wakefield town line, where it becomes Oldacre Road, checking his rearview mirror for a tail. He takes a left onto Neville Road and drives out past the beaver swamp, where the moon's reflected in the glassy water and the drowned branchless trees stick up. Past a dairy farm with the house lights off and a chained collie standing on top of his doghouse. Goodbye, goodbye. Down the hill and over a trapezoidal iron bridge that rattles when you cross, and left again at the fork onto something called Aylmer Road that he's never been on but seems to lead in the direction of 22A. It climbs gradually uphill, with big old slabby-barked maple trees along both sides. Sudden yellow glow around the curve, then a pair of headlights. He pretends it's the cops: dims his lights, gets way over to his side of the road, then keeps watching the rearview mirror until the red taillights wink out. Whew: close one. Farmhouse on the left, one upstairs light on, then a double-wide on the right, a white-painted truck tire half buried beside the driveway. Goodbye. Then nothing but trees, the road starts downhill again and, after half a mile, there's a stop sign and two-lane blacktop going left or right. Bingo.

And forty-five minutes later he's southbound on the Northway. He's keeping the speedometer at an even sixty-five and sitting up as straight as General Douglas MacArthur, his hands at ten o'clock and two o'clock. Sir yes sir. With drugs enough to keep him crisp and snappy. No tape deck or radio anymore, but he can sing, can't he? He can sing "Valderi, valdera" or "I'll Fly Away" or any fucking thing he wants. The Wicked Witch's soldiers' scary song that goes Oh-wee-oh. He's four hours from New York City.

He stops once to piss and get cash, coffee and gasoline at a service area, once to do some coke at a dark rest stop, once to pull over and wait until no cars are in sight and shoot at a deer sign (misses the deer but hits the sign at least), once again to do more coke in between two

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tractor-trailers in the parking lot at another service area, and once at the high point of the Tappan Zee Bridge, at about four in the morning. To throw that fucking gun into the Hudson River. Before he does something crazy. (Little joke.)

There's no traffic coming either way, and this forest of rivet-studded girders and braces screens him from the tollbooths. He cuts the engine, gets out and takes the.22 from behind the seat, then steps up off the roadway onto a catwalk with a little fence in front of it, high above the water. New York City's glowing downriver, H-bomb pink emanating from just around that bend. A car goes by in the other direction; it seems to slow briefly, then pick up speed. Better do this and get the fuck out of here. He grips the rifle by the barrel end, like a baseball bat, swings and lets the son of a bitch fly out into the dark.

Willis stands and listens but can't hear it hit. Can it still be falling?

THREE

Toward the middle of October, Jean leaves a message on the machine in Preston Falls. Just Hi how are you, how's the house coming, everything's fine down here, kids are fine. The lightest, brightest message possible. A first move. Though it's probably stupid: is this supposed to make him think their last conversation hadn't been as dire as it really was? Or to make her think so?

A week later she leaves a second message— Hi, just thought I might catch you in, give a call when you get a chance — and then, a few days after that, a third message, saying she's a little concerned and would appreciate it if he'd please call. This is Saturday. Monday he's due back at work.

Sunday starts out warm and clear. She takes Rathbone for his morning walk, with just an old shirt of Willis's over the t-shirt she wore to bed. Then she brings her coffee outside and sits on the tailgate of Carol's little red pickup, a Subaru Brat with roll bars and 4WD, and just breathes: the air still smells almost like summer. Rathbone lies with his belly in the cool, dewy grass.

Around eleven o'clock — which is really noon, since they set the clocks back last night — she and Carol take the kids to the pancake place. Jean brings a deck of cards, and in the booth they get in a hand of gin rummy before the food arrives. Roger, though he's embarrassed to be with three females, thinks gin rummy is terribly sophisticated. When he fans out his cards he makes sure their overlap is precisely uniform. Mel draws a card, takes a quick in-breath, tucks the card into her hand and discards a king of clubs; Roger bites his lip and grabs it too eagerly and Carol groans. This is almost like a family. Carol wins, as usual — she thinks it's condescending not to play your best against kids — but Mel almost takes her.

Half a honeydew for Mel, The Lumberjack ("A Buckle-Bustin' Breakfast from the North Woods") for Roger, a cheese omelette for

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Carol and just toast and coffee for Jean, since Roger can never finish The Lumberjack and she hates waste. So what does everybody want to do? Mel wants to go home and call her friend Erin. Roger wants to go home and watch videos. Carol suggests a hike at the reservoir; she's got to start back west sometime this week, and it's such an incredible day. Groaning from Mel and Roger, though less than you'd think. Even they feel the pull of a day like this.