T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

“Can you be ready today? For the afternoon run? That’s at three-thirty?”

He said, “Yeah, I guess,” but it came out as an airless rasp and he had to repeat himself.

“We’re going to hook you up with a bullhorn, just like you wanted, because frankly we’re all getting kind of desperate here. But you’ll wear protection, I insist on that. And we’re going to have a select group of agents on the train, a few females too, so it looks like the tourists are out again because we don’t want to make the suspect — Adam, I mean — suspicious.”

What could he say? The words were wadded in his throat. He needed water, needed breakfast, needed an aspirin. “So if he comes to me, you’ll take him? Is that it? Is that the plan?”

“Listen, I don’t want to risk any lives out there, and yes, that would be the ideal solution.”

“If I can get him to come.”

“Yeah, if .”

“And get him to put his gun down.”

“It’s a big if. But I tell you, at this point I’m willing to try anything.”

There was a silence.

“And if he won’t put it down, assuming he even comes to the sound of my voice?”

A sigh. The squawk of a radio in the background. “I wouldn’t want to speculate.”

The railroad was strictly a tourist thing now, though originally it had been used for bringing logs down to the mill at Fort Bragg, now defunct, like everything else, and he hadn’t been on it more than three or four times in his life. The Skunk Train. With its cartoon skunk logo that made everything seem so innocuous and appealing, though the nickname had come about because the train had originally burned crude oil for heat in the passenger car and that left a sour odor hanging over the tracks. Half-day trips took you to Northspur from the coast or down from Willits up above. And you could see and document the redwoods without having to exert any more effort than it took to set down your wine glass and lift a camera off the seat. For his part, when he wanted to see redwoods, he used his legs. And what he smelled out there wasn’t crude oil or diesel or even woodsmoke from the old steam engine they sometimes ran but just what nature offered up. Not that he was critical. Or complaining. Every town needed an industry, and now that the mills were gone, this was the next best thing. Let the tourists go gaga over the big trees, let them grow fat and fatter. It was fine with him.

The first thing he did after he got off the phone with Rob was walk the three blocks into town for a big twenty-ounce caffe latte with a double shot of espresso, the air dense, the sea swallowed up in fog. There were tourists everywhere, though the season was petering out. Or should have been. But then the Boomers were enjoying their retirement and didn’t have a season anymore — they just kept coming. He would have gone to the bakery or the breakfast place to put something on his stomach, if only for ballast, but he didn’t really want to see anybody or have to make explanations or pretend to be grateful for the expressions of sympathy people kept laying on him, whether false or sincere or somewhere in between. Instead he went to the deli and had them fix him a couple of sandwiches, one for now, one for the train, then he went home to make his hundred daily phone calls in the frustrated hope of gleaning some bit of information that would provide the key here, the key he could turn in a lock that would open the door and make all this go away.

Just yesterday he’d heard from a source at the Fort Bragg police station (Freddy Aulin, who’d graduated from the high school in 1982) that a witness had positively identified Adam the night before. The witness — a man in his twenties, one of those free spirits who didn’t worry much about grooming and slept rough and had a drug and/or drinking problem — was making his own camp off the railroad tracks up near the South Fork milepost, and while he wasn’t oblivious to the sheriff’s order he just didn’t think it applied to him. It was unclear whether he knew Adam or not, but he was heading back from town along the tracks with a bottle of fortified wine and saw a figure coming toward him, moving fast, and recognized Adam. The thing was, Adam didn’t seem jumpy or paranoid at all. In fact, he’d stopped and chatted with the man awhile, even going so far as to share a joint with him in a thicket not fifty feet off the tracks where transients were known to gather. Was the man afraid for his life? Well, no, he wasn’t. For one thing, he was drunk, and for another he expressed nothing but admiration for what Adam was doing, sticking it to them, and they were brothers, that was how he saw it. Adam must have seen it that way too.

“You know,” the man told him, “they’re out here looking for you. Like a million cops.”

Adam just shrugged. “Let them look,” he said.

And how had this man come to let the police in on the encounter? Had he strolled in voluntarily to offer up information, maybe in the hope of scoring some reward money? No. He was arrested for urinating in public when he went back into town later that night for a second bottle, and as the arresting officer was handcuffing him, he happened to let it drop, whether out of civic duty or by way of extenuation wasn’t clear. “I don’t know if it means anything to you,” he said, the words thick in his mouth, “but I just saw that dude you’re after, Adam? Like two hours ago?”

So yes, Sten was making phone calls, and whether they led to anything other than frustration, more frustration, at least he was doing something. He spent the next two hours on the phone, learning nothing, then thought to call Carolee before he left for the train, just to let her know what was going on. She picked up on the first ring and right away he could tell something was wrong, just from the way she murmured hello as if it had to be pried from her lips.

“What is it?” he said. “You hear anything?”

It took her a minute. She was gathering herself, her breathing harsh and sodden, as if she were holding a washcloth over the receiver. “They shot the antelope.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Two of the sable. Corinna and Lulu. They’re saying Adam did it.”

“Adam? That’s ridiculous. It’s forty miles to get down there.”

She didn’t say anything to this, just breathed through the line.

“It’s probably nothing. Some kid with a gun.”

A pause. Her voice so reduced it was barely there. “Adam’s a kid with a gun.”

“Some other kid. Some apprentice yahoo. It’s nothing, I’m sure of it.”

“Uh-huh. Tell that to Cindy. And Gentian. They’ve got two dead animals on their hands, animals that might as well have been over in Africa, taking their chances there.”

He didn’t know what to say to this. Adam could easily have humped those forty miles in the last two days, but Sten was sure he hadn’t. And even if he had, why would he shoot antelope? But then — and Sten’s thoughts were racing ahead of him — why would he shoot Carey or Art or open fire on a SWAT team? The answer came rising to the surface like something buoyed on its own gases: because he was suicidal, that was why. Because he wanted to die. He wasn’t going to come to the train, to the sound of his own name, to his father. That was fantasy. That was futility. That was the way to pain and more pain.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am. Really. That’s a terrible thing. But I’m sure it’s not Adam, I’m sure there’s some other explanation. . but look, the reason I called is I heard from Rob and he wants me to go up the train line.”

“When?”

“Today. This afternoon.”

“I’m coming.”

“You heard Rob, didn’t you? Bullets are flying out there. And whether these cops are highly trained or not, you never can tell what’s going to happen, so that’s just not an option.”