Страница 83 из 274
I walked back to the door, caught Walter’s eyes, and looked down at the seven-year-old angel.
“You look beautiful, Je
“At school today I did,” she said. “You like my wand?” She held up a long pixie stick with a glittery cardboard star glued to the end.
“Take a walk with us,” Walter said. “I left the car by the mailbox.”
“Let me see if I can find some candy for —”
He rustled the trash bag in his right hand. “They’ve got plenty of candy. Come on.” I put on a pair of boots, grabbed a jacket and an umbrella from the coat closet, and locked the door behind me as I stepped outside.
The four of us walked down the sidewalk, and when we reached the driveway, Walter handed his umbrella to Je
“Why, Daddy?”
“I have to talk to Uncle Andy.”
She took the umbrella. “You have to come with me, J.D.,” she said, bossing her brother.
“Nooooo!”
“Go with her, son. We’ll be right behind you.” Je
Walter stepped under my umbrella, and we started up the drive, the tall loblollies on either side of us. I waited for him to speak as the rain drummed on the canopy. The night smelled of wet pine.
“Beth’s packing,” he whispered. “She’s taking the kids away.”
“Where?”
“I told her not to tell me.”
“She knows about —”
“No. She knows the children are in danger. That’s all she needs to know.”
“Stoppit!” John David yelled at his sister.
“Kids!” Walter shouted gruffly. “Behave.”
“Dad, Je
“I don’t wa
I wondered where Walter’s anger toward me had gone.
“Do you really know where he is, Andy?” he whispered.
“I’ve got a possible alias in New England. Now, I can’t be sure until I get there, but I think it’s him.”
“So you’re definitely going?”
“Yeah.”
He stopped and faced me. “You’re going there to kill him? To put him in a hole somewhere, where no one’s ever go
“That’s the plan.”
“And you have no compunctions about killing your own brother?”
“None.”
We started walking again. I had an awful premonition.
“You’ve called the police, haven’t you?” I said.
“What?”
“You told them about Orson.”
“No, Andy.”
“But you’re going to.”
He shook his head.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Come here, Je
“Je
“Oh yeah!” she said, remembering. “Look, Andy, isn’t it cool?”
Je
W – Shhhhh. O
I looked up at Walter. His eyes flooded.
“All right, kids.” He smiled through it. “Here. Go on ahead now. Let us talk.” Je
“She had it when she came home from school,” Walter said. “Beth noticed it when they were putting on her costume. Fuckin’ teacher didn’t know anything about it. Je
“Jesus, Walter. I am —”
“I don’t want your apologies or your pity,” he whispered. “I’m going with you. That’s what I came to tell you. We’re go
The kids had reached the white Cadillac. We stopped ten feet from the end of the driveway and Walter turned to me. “So when are you leaving?” he asked.
“A day or two. I’ve gotta go before my mother’s discovered.”
His eyes softened. “Andy, I want you to know that I am s —”
“And I don’t need your pity,” I said. “It won’t help either of us do what we have to do.”
He nodded and looked over his shoulder at Je
21
THE eve of my departure for Vermont was our thirty-fifth birthday, and Orson mailed me a handmade card. On the front, he’d designed a collage out of photographs, all taken in the sickly orange light of his shed. There was a head shot of Shirley Ta
Below the colorful collage, scrawled in Orson’s unmistakable hand: “What do you get for the guy who has it all?” On the inside he’d written, “Not a goddamn thing. A big happy birthday from Shirley and the Gang.”
Woodside is a foothill community in midwestern Vermont, isolated from the major cities of the North by the Green Mountains in the east and New York’s Adirondacks in the west. On an autumn day, it’s quintessential American countryside, breathtaking in its open vistas of rolling hills, endless mountain chains, and a quaint college town tucked into a vale.
According to the gas station attendant, we were three weeks late. Then the forests had been burning with the brightest color in thirty years. Now, the leaves brown and dead, few remained on the trees, and the blue sky gleamed awkwardly against the winter bleakness of the countryside. Vermont in November smacked of the same stiff beauty as dolling up a corpse for its wake.
Beyond the outskirts of Woodside, on the fringe of the Green Mountains, Walter and I approached the i
Walter pulled his Cadillac into the gravel parking lot adjacent to the sallow lawn behind the house. There were only seven other cars, and I felt relieved to be outside of Orson’s town. We’d almost stayed at a motel in downtown Woodside because of its proximity to the college campus, but the risk of ru
Hauling our suitcases up the front porch steps, we collapsed into a pair of rockers. The mountainside fell away from where we sat for a thousand feet, and the late-afternoon sun shone on the forest of bare trees in the valley below. Naked branches moved with the breeze, and I imagined that three weeks ago the sound of chattering leaves had filled the air. Across the valley, which extended twenty miles west, I could see into New York State, and the grander mountains of the Adirondacks that stood there.
Wood smoke scented the forest, and sitting in the cold, listening and watching, I sensed Walter’s restiveness.
After a moment, he said, “It’s too cold to sit out here. I’ll check us in.” He stood up and lifted his suitcase off the porch. “You just go
“Yep.”
Our room was at the end of a creaky hallway on the second floor. There were two double beds, placed on opposite sides of the room, a dormer window between them, from which you could view the mountains. The ceiling slanted up on both sides and met in a straight line, which bisected the room. Two paisley love seats faced each other in the center of the hardwood floor, a squat square coffee table between them. For seventy-five dollars a night, it was a lovely room. There were even fresh irises in glass vases on each bedside table. They made the room smell like an arbor.
Walter sat on his bed, unpacking his clothes, and I lay on mine, my suitcase still unopened on the floor. Voices moved through the walls, and I heard the hollow clack of footsteps ascending the staircase. Someone knocked.