The Tommyknockers, Page 41

  Del laughed, but there hadn't been much humor in the sound. "I wandered around for a while, thinking I was following the polestar, and when I still hadn't come out on the Hammer Cut Road by nine o'clock or so, I kinda rubbed my eyes and saw it wasn't Polaris at all, but one of the planets--Mars or Sat'n, I guess. I laid down to sleep, and until I came out along Preston Stream a week later, I don't remember nothing but little bits and pieces."

  "Well ..." Ev halted. It sounded entirely unlike Del, whose head was as level as a carpenter's plane. "Well, was you panicked, Del?"

  Del's eyes rolled up to meet Ev's, and they were still ashamed, but there was also a leaven of real humor in them now. "A man can't stay in a panic for a whole week, I don't b'lieve," he said dryly. "It's awful tirin."

  "So you just ..."

  "I just," Del agreed, "but just what, I don't know. I know that when I woke up from that nap my feet and my ass was both asleep and all numb, and I know that in one of those dreams it seemed like I heard somethin hummin--the way you can hear power lines hum on a still day, you know--and that's all. I forgot all m'woodcraft and wandered around in the woods like somebody who'd never even seen the woods before. When I hit Preston Stream I knew enough to follow it out, and I woke up in here, and I guess I'm a laughingstock in town, but I'm grateful to be alive. It's God's mercy that I am."

  "You ain't a laughingstock, Del," Ev said, and of course that was a lie, because that was exactly what Del was. He worked at overcoming it for nearly five years, and when he saw for sure that the barbershop wits were never going to let him live it down, he moved up to East Eddington and opened a combination garage and small engine-repair shop. Ev still got up to see him once in a while, but Del didn't come down to Haven much anymore. Ev guessed he knew why.

  10

  Sitting in his rented room, Ev closed the compass up as tight as it would go and drew the tiniest circle yet, the smallest the compass would make. There was only one house inside this marble-sized circle, and he thought: That house is the closest one there is to the center of Haven. Funny I never thought about it before.

  It was the old Garrick place, sitting there on Derry Road with Big Injun Woods widening out behind it.

  Should have drawn this last circle in red, if no other.

  Frank's niece, Bobbi Anderson, lived on the Garrick place now--not that she farmed, of course; she wrote books. Ev hadn't passed many words with Bobbi, but she had a good reputation in town. She paid her bills on time, folks said, and didn't gossip. Also, she wrote good old western stories that you could really sink your teeth into, not all full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the ones that fellow who lived up Bangor wrote. Goddam good westerns, people said.

  Especially for a girl.

  People in Haven felt good about Bobbi Anderson, but of course she'd just been in town for thirteen years and people would have to wait and see. Garrick, most agreed, had been as crazy as a shithouse rat. He always brought in a good garden, but that didn't change his mental state. He was always trying to tell someone about his dreams. They were usually about the Second Coming. After a while it got so that even Arlene Cullum, who sold Amway with the zeal of a Christian martyr, would make herself scarce when she saw Frank Garrick's truck (plastered with bumper-stickers which said things like IF THE RAP TURE'STODAY SOMEBODY GRAB MY STEERING WHEEL) driving down the village's Main Street.

  In the late sixties, the old man had gotten a bee in his bonnet about flying saucers. Something about Elijah seeing a wheel within a wheel, and being taken up to heaven by angels driving chariots of fire powered by electromagnetism. He had been crazy, and he had died of a heart attack in 1975.

  But before he died, Ev thought with rising coldness, he lost all his teeth. I noticed it, and I remember Justin Hurd just down the road commenting on it, and ... and now Justin's the closest, except for Bobbi herself, that is, and Justin also wasn't what you'd call a model of sanity and reason.Few times I saw him before I left, he even reminded me of old Frank.

  It was odd, he thought at first, that he had never put together the run of peculiar things that had happened within those two inner circles before, that no one had. Further reflection made him decide it really wasn't so strange, after all. A life--particularly a long one--was composed of millions of events; they made a crowded tapestry with many patterns woven into it. Such a pattern as this--the deaths, the murders, the lost hunters, crazy Frank Garrick, maybe even that queer fire at the Paulsons' --only showed up if you were looking for it. Once seen, you wondered how you could have missed it. But if you weren't--

  And now a new thought dawned: Bobbi Anderson was perhaps not all right. He remembered that since the beginning of July, perhaps even before, there had been sounds of heavy machinery coming from Big Injun Woods. Ev had heard the sounds and dismissed them--Maine was heavily forested, and the sounds were all too familiar. New England Paper doing a spot of logging on its land, most likely.

  Except, now that he thought about it--now that he had seen the pattern--Ev realized that the sounds weren't deep enough in the woods to be on NEP's land--those sounds were coming from the Garrick place. And he also realized that the earlier sounds--the cycling, waspy whine of a chainsaw, the crackle-crunch of falling trees, the coughing roar of a gas-powered chipper--had given way to sounds he didn't associate with woods work at all. The later sounds had been ... what? Earth-moving machinery, perhaps.

  Once you saw the pattern, things fell into place like the last dozen pieces going effortlessly into a big jigsaw puzzle.

  Ev sat looking down at the map and the circles. A numbing horror seemed to be filling his veins, freezing him from the inside out.

  Once you saw the pattern, you couldn't help seeing it.

  Ev slammed the atlas shut and went to bed.

  11

  Where he was unable to sleep.

  What are they doing down there tonight? Building things? Making people disappear? What?

  Every time he drifted near sleep, an image came: everyone in Haven Village standing in Main Street with drugged, dreamy expressions on their faces, all of them looking southwest, toward those sounds, like Muslims facing Mecca to pray.

  Heavy machinery... earth-moving machinery.

  As the pieces went into the puzzle, you began to see what it was, even if there was no picture on the box to help you. Lying in this narrow bed not far from where Hilly lay in his coma, Ev Hillman thought he saw the picture pretty well. Not all of it, mind you, but a lot. He saw it and knew perfectly well no one would believe him. Not without proof. And he dared not go back, dared not put himself in their reach. They would not let him go a second time.

  Something. Something out in Big Injun Woods. Something in the ground, something on the land Frank Garrick had willed to his niece, who wrote those western books. Something that knocked compasses and human minds galley-west if you got too close. For all Ev knew, there might be such strange deposits all over the earth. If it did nothing else, it might explain why people in some places seemed so goddam pissed off all the time. Something bad. Haunted. Maybe even accursed.

  Ev stirred restlessly, rolled over, looked at the ceiling.

  Something had been in the earth. Bobbi Anderson had found it and she was digging it up, her and that fellow who was staying out at the farm with her. That fellow's name was ... was ...

  Ev groped, but couldn't come up with it. He remembered the way Beach Jernigan's mouth had thinned when the subject of Bobbi's friend came up one day in the Haven Lunch. The regulars on coffee break had just observed the man coming out of the market with a bag of groceries. He had a place over in Troy, Beach said; a shacky little place with a woodstove and plastic over the windows.

  Someone said he'd heard the fella was educated.

  Beach said an education never kept anyone from being no-account.

  No one in the Lunch had argued the point, Ev remembered.

  Nancy Voss had been equally disapproving. She said Bobbi's friend had shot his wife but had been l
et off because he was a college professor. "If you got a sheepskin written in Latin words in this country, you can get away with anything, "she had said.

  They had watched the fellow get into Bobbi's truck and drive back toward the old Garrick place.

  "I heard he done majored in drinkin," old Dave Rutledge said from the end stool that was his special place. "Everyone goes out there says he's most allus drunk as a coon on stump-likker."

  There had been a burst of mean, gossipy country laughter at that. They hadn't liked Bobbi's friend; none had. Why? Because he had shot his wife? Because he drank? Because he was living with a woman he wasn't married to? Ev knew better. There had been men in the Lunch that day who had not just beaten their wives but beaten them into entirely new shapes. Out here it was part of the code: you were obligated to put one upside the old woman's head if she "got sma'at." Out here were men who lived on beer from eleven in the morning until six at night and cheap greenfront whiskey from six to midnight and would drink Old Woodsman flydope strained through a snotrag if they couldn't afford whiskey. Men who had the sex lives of rabbits, jumping from hole to hole.... And what had his name been?

  Ev drifted toward sleep. Saw them standing on the sidewalks, on the lawn of the public library, over by the little park, staring dreamily toward those sounds. Snapped awake again.

  What did you find out, Ruth? Why did they murder you?

  He tossed onto his left side.

  David's alive ... but to bring him back I have to start in Haven.

  He tossed onto his right side.

  They'll kill me if I go back. There was once a time when I was almost as well-liked there as Ruth herself... least, I always liked to think so. Now they hate me. I saw it in their eyes the night they started looking for David. I took Hilly out because he was sick and needed the doctor, yes ... but it was damned good to have a reason to go. Maybe they only let me go because David distracted them. Maybe they just wanted to be rid of me. Either way, I was lucky to get out. I'd never get out again. So how can I go back? I can't.

  Ev tossed and turned, caught on the horns of two imperatives--he would have to go back to Haven if he wanted to rescue David before David died, but if he went back to Haven he would be killed and buried quickly in someone's back field.

  Sometime shortly before midnight, he fell into a troubled doze which quickly deepened into the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.

  12

  He slept later than he had in years, awakening on Tuesday at a quarter past ten. He felt refreshed and whole for the first time in a long while. The sleep had done him a power of good, too: during it he had thought of how he could maybe get back into Haven and out again. Maybe. For David's sake, and Hilly's, that was a risk he would take.

  He thought he could get in and out of Haven on the day of Ruth McCausland's funeral.

  13

  Butch "Monster" Dugan was the biggest man Ev had ever seen. Ev believed that Justin Hurd's father Henry might have been within a shout--Henry had stood six-six, weighed three hundred and eighty pounds, and had shoulders so broad he had to go through most doors sideways--but Ev thought this fellow was a tad bigger. Twenty or thirty pounds lighter, maybe, but that was all.

  When Ev shook his hand, he saw that word on him had been getting around. It was in Dugan's face.

  "Sit down, Mr. Hillman," Dugan said, and seated himself in a swivel chair that looked as if it might have been rammed out of a huge oak. "What can I do for you?"

  He expects me to start raving, Ev thought calmly, just the way we always expected Frank Garrick to start when he caught up to one of us on the street. And I guess I ain't going to disappoint him. But if you step careful, Ev, you may still get your way. You know now where you want to go, anyway.

  "Well, maybe you could do something, at that," Ev said. At least he hadn't been drinking; trying to talk to that reporter after those beers had been a bad mistake. "Paper says you'll be going to Ruth McCausland's funeral tomorrow."

  Dugan nodded. "I'm going. Ruth was a personal friend."

  "And there are others from Derry barracks that'll be going? Paper said her husband was a trooper, and she was in the line of policework herself--oh, bein a town constable's no great shakes, I know, but you get what I mean. There will be others, won't there?"

  Dugan was frowning now, and he had a lot of face to frown with.

  "Mr. Hillman, if you have a point to make, I'm not getting it." And I'm a busy man this morning, in case you didn't know it, his face added. I've got two cops missing, it's starting to look more and more like they ran into some guys jacking deer and the jackers panicked and shot them; I'm in the hot-seat on that one, and on top of it all my old friend Ruth McCausland has died, and I don't have either the time or the patience for bullshit.

  "I know you're not. But you will. Did she have other friends who'll be going?"

  "Yes. Half a dozen or more. I'm going by myself, starting a little early, so I can talk to some people about a related case."

  Ev nodded. "I know about the related case," he said, "and I guess you know about me. Or think you do."

  "Mr. Hillman--"

  "I have talked foolishly, and to the wrong people, and at the wrong times," Ev said in that same calm voice. "Under other circumstances I would have known better, but I've been upset. One of my grandsons is missing. The other is in a sort of coma."

  "Yes. I know."

  "I've been so confused I haven't really known if I was comin or goin. So I blabbed to some of the nurses, and then I went up to Bangor and talked to a reporter. Bright. I kind of got the idea you'd heard most of the things I had to say to him."

  "I understand you believe there was some sort of ... of conspiracy in the matter of David Brown's disappearance--"

  Ev had to struggle to keep from laughing. The word was both bizarre and apt. He never would have thought of it himself. Oh, there was a conspiracy going on, all right. One hell of a conspiracy.

  "Yessir. I believe there was a conspiracy, and I think you've got three cases that are a lot more related than you understand--the disappearance of my grandson, the disappearance of those two troopers, and the death of Ruth McCausland--my friend as well as yours."

  Dugan looked a bit startled ... and for the first time that dismissive look went out of his eyes. For the first time Ev felt that Dugan was really seeing him, Everett Hillman, instead of just some crazy old rip who had blown in to fart away part of his morning.

  "Perhaps you'd better give me the gist of what you believe," Dugan said, and took out a pad of paper.

  "No. You can just put that pad away."

  Dugan looked at him silently for a moment. He didn't put the pad away, but he put down the pencil.

  "Bright thought I was crazy, and I didn't tell him half of what I thought," Ev said, "so I ain't going to tell you any. But here's the thing--I think David's still alive. I don't think he's in Haven anymore, but I think if I went back there I might be able to get an idea on where he is. Now, I have reasons--pretty good ones, I think--to believe that I'm not wanted in Haven. I have reasons to think that if I went back there under most circumstances, I'd most likely disappear like David Brown. Or have an accident like Ruth."

  Butch Dugan's face changed. "I think," he said, "I got to ask you to explain that, Mr. Hillman."

  "I ain't going to. I can't. I know what I know, and believe what I believe, but I ain't got a speck of proof. I know how crazy I must sound, but if you look into my face, you'll know one thing, at least: I believe what I'm saying."

  Dugan sighed. "Mr. Hillman, if you were in this business, you'd know how sincere most liars look." Ev started to say something and Dugan shook his head. "Forget that. Cheap shot. I've only had about six hours' sleep since Sunday night. I'm getting too old for these marathons. Fact is, I do believe you're sincere. But you're only making ominous sounds, talking around the edges of things. Sometimes people do that when they're scared, but mostly they do it when edges are all they have. Either way, I haven't got time to woo you.
I answered your questions; maybe you'd better state your business."

  "Glad to. I came here for two reasons, Trooper Dugan. First one was to make sure there was going to be a lot of cops in Haven tomorrow. Things are less likely to happen when there are a lot of cops around, don't you agree?"

  Dugan said nothing, only looked at Ev expressionlessly.

  "Second was to tell you I'll be in Haven tomorrow too. I won't be at Ruth's funeral, though. I'm going to have a Very pistol with me, and if, during that funeral, you or any of your men should see a big old star-shell go off in the sky, you'll know I have run afoul of some of that craziness no one will believe. Do you follow me?"

  "You said going back to Haven might be ... uh, unhealthy for you." Dugan's face was still blank, but that didn't matter; Ev knew he had gone back to his original idea: Ev was crazy, after all.

  "Under most circumstances, I said. Under these circumstances, I think I can get away with it. Ruth was loved in Haven, which is a fact I don't think I have to tell you. Most of the town will turn out to see her into the ground. I don't know if they still loved her when she died, but that don't matter-they'll turn out anyway."

  "How do you figure that?" Dugan asked. "Or is that another one of those things you don't want to talk about?"

  "No, I don't mind. It would look wrong if they didn't turn out."

  "To who?"

  "To you. To the other policemen who were friends to her and her husband. To the pots from the Penobscot County Democratic Committee. Why, 'twouldn't surprise me if Congressman Brennan sent someone up from Augusta--she worked awful hard for him when he run for office in Washington. She wasn't just local, y'see, and that's part of what they got to deal with. They're like people who don't want to throw a party but who are stuck doing it just the same. I'm hoping they'll be so busy making things look right--with putting on a good show--that they'll not even know I've been in Haven until I'm gone."

  Butch Dugan crossed his arms over his chest. Ev had been close to the truth--at first, Dugan had indulged himself in the fancy that David Bright, who was usually an accurate interpreter of human behavior, had been wrong this time; Hillman was as sane as he was. Now he was mildly disturbed, not because Hillman had turned out to be crazy after all, but because he had turned out to be really crazy. And yet ... there was something oddly persuasive in the old man's calm, reasonable voice and his steady gaze.