The White Road

“I hear you’re about to become a father,” he said. “That’s good, after all that’s happened. I was you, maybe I’d stay up there in Maine too and forget that some asshole called you up out of the blue to join in his crusade. Yeah, I think that would be what I’d do, if I was you. You take care now, Charlie Parker. Look after that little lady.”

“I will.”

“Yeah.”

Then he hung up. I tossed the phone on one of the chairs and dragged my hands over my face. The dog now lay curled at my feet, his bone clasped between his front paws as he tugged at it with his sharp teeth. The sun still shone on the marsh and birds still moved slowly on the waters, calling to one another as they glided between the cattails, but now the transient, fragile nature of what I was witnessing seemed to weigh heavily upon me. I found myself looking toward the ruined shack where the garter snakes lay, waiting for rodents and small birds to stumble into their path. You could walk away from them, pretend to yourself that they weren’t doing you any harm and that you had no cause to go interfering with them. If you were right, then you might never have to face them again, or maybe creatures bigger and stronger than they would do you a favor and deal with them for you.

But, someday, you might go back to that cabin and lift up those same floorboards, and where once there were a dozen snakes there would now be hundreds and no collection of old boards and decaying timbers would be enough to contain them. Because ignoring them or forgetting them doesn’t make them go away.

It just makes it easier for them to breed.

That afternoon, I left Rachel working in her office and headed into Portland. My trainers and sweats were in the trunk of the car, and I had intended to go into One City Center and do a couple of circuits, but instead I ended up walking the streets, browsing in Carlson amp; Turner’s antiquarian bookstore up on Congress Street and Bullmoose Music down in the Old Port. I picked up the new Pinetop Seven album, Bringing Home the Last Great Strike, a copy of Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker, and Leisure and Other Songs by a group called Spokane, because they were led by Rick Alverson, who used to head up Drunk and who made the kind of music you wanted to listen to when old friends let you down or you caught a glimpse of a former lover on a city street, her fingers entwined with those of another, looking at him in a way that reminded you of how she had once looked at you. There were still crowds of tourists around, the last of the summer wave. Soon the leaves would start to turn in earnest and then the next wave would arrive to watch the trees burn like fire as far north as the Canadian border.

I was angry with Elliot and more angry with myself. It sounded like a difficult case but difficult cases were part of the job. If I sat around waiting for easy ones, then I’d starve or go crazy. Two years ago, I’d have headed down to South Carolina to help him out without a second thought, but now I had Rachel and I was about to become a father again. I had been given a second chance, and I didn’t want to endanger it in any way.

I found myself back at my car. This time, I took my kit from the trunk and spent an hour pushing myself as hard as I had ever pushed myself in the gym, working until my muscles burned and I had to sit on a bench with my head down before the worst of the nausea had passed. But I still felt ill as I drove back to Scarborough, and the sweat that dripped from my face was the sweat of the sickbed.

Rachel and I didn’t talk properly about the call until di

But if I had not tried, if I had not reached out to another person and made some small, halting co

And this woman was, in her quiet way, extraordinary. She had seen in me something worthy of love, of salvation, and had set about recovering that thing from the deep place to which it had retreated in order to protect itself from further harm. She was not so naive as to believe that she could save me: rather, she made me want to save myself.

Rachel had been shocked when she discovered that she was pregnant. We both were, a little, in the begi

While I watched her quietly, Rachel tore into a piece of beef so rare she had to hold it down with her fork to keep it from making a break for the door. Beside it, potatoes and carrots and zucchini lay heaped in little mountains.

“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked, when she came up briefly for air.

I curled my arm protectively around my plate. “Back,” I said. “Bad dog.”

To my left, Walt’s head spun toward me, a brief flash of confusion visible in his eyes. “Not you,” I reassured him, and his tail wagged.

Rachel finished chewing, then jabbed her momentarily empty fork at me. “It was that call today. Am I right?”

I nodded and toyed with my food, then told her Elliot’s story. “He’s in trouble,” I concluded. “And anyone who sides with him against Earl Larousse is going to be in trouble too.”

“Have you ever met Larousse?”

“No. The only reason I know about him is because Elliot has told me things in the past.”

“Bad things?”

“Nothing worse than you’d expect from a man with more money than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people in the state: intimidation, bribery, crooked land deals, brushes with the EPA over polluted rivers and poisoned fields, the usual stuff. Throw a stone in Washington when Congress is in session and you’ll hit apologists for any one of a hundred people like him. But that doesn’t make the loss of his daughter any less painful for him.”

An image of Irv Blythe flashed briefly in my mind. I swatted the thought away like a fly.

“And Norton is certain that his client didn’t kill her?”

“Seems that way. After all, he took over the case from the original lawyer and then stood bail for the guy, and Elliot isn’t the kind of man who risks his money or his reputation on a losing prospect. Then again, a black man accused of the murder of a rich white girl could be at risk among the general population, assuming somebody got it into his head to make a name for himself with the grieving family. According to Elliot, he either bailed his client or he buried him. Those were the options.”