“Well,” LaRiviere said. “Well.” He paused. “Think the snow’s done?”
“Looks like it to me,” Brown said, and he peered up at the creamy sky. “For today.”
Jack looked straight ahead and at no one in particular. “It’s a real early winter,” he offered.
Wade said nothing. He was staring into Jack’s impassive face, catching glimpses of light in the darkness there, flashes and glints of heated metal whirling in a blackened pit. The bits of light that he saw, the heat that he felt, he had never seen or felt in Jack before, and they surprised Wade. He had known the tall angular youth since the boy first showed promise as an athlete in grade school, that one summer Wade coached the Lawford Pony League team and, thanks to Jack, they went all the way to the state semifinals down in Manchester.
The trooper with the dog and his partner with the camera crossed the road and got into the lead cruiser, turned it around carefully and headed back down the mountain. The third trooper stood at ease a short ways behind Brown, as if awaiting further orders.
LaRiviere looked at his watch and said, “Well, shit. This’s gonna be one fucking mess to clean up. Twombley’s son-in-law and I suppose his daughter are up for the weekend. Didn’t you say you seen him already this morning, Wade?”
“Yeah. I did. I seen them.”
“You know where they’re staying?” Brown asked LaRiviere.
“The family’s got a place on the lake, out on the point on Agaway. Nice place. They come up summers and during the winter on weekends for skiing. You know, they go to Water-ville mainly, and over to Franconia and Loon, for skiing. Nice place. Sauna, hot tub, the works. Cost a fucking penny, I’ll tell you. Fellow from Concord built it for him. I dug the wells.”
“I dug the wells,” Wade said. “Over three hundred feet apiece, fourteen gallons a minute each.”
LaRiviere stared at Wade with obvious irritation and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“You know the place?” Brown asked the trooper behind him, ignoring Wade.
“I don’t think so.”
“No, I don’t think you do, either,” Brown said. “You want to talk to them, Gordon?” he asked. “Tell them about the old man’s tragic demise? You know them. You knew the old man.”
“Sure. What the fuck. My day’s already ruined,” he said. “Gimme the keys,” he said to Wade. “You can go back with Jack.”
Wade said okay and handed over the keys. Then he said, “I’m still going to give that bastard a summons, you know.”
LaRiviere looked at him hard and was silent. His stare said, What the hell are you telling me now, you dumb stubborn bastard?
“I mean, it’s too bad about Twombley and all, but shit, right’s right,” Wade said. He turned to Jack. “The fucking son-in-law, whatzizname, Mel Gordon, practically ran me over this morning, passed a stopped school bus and everything. In front of the school. He’s goddamned lucky he didn’t kill somebody’s kid.”
Jack didn’t respond. He seemed to see straight through Wade to the snowy woods beyond.
Brown smiled his thin smile, like a garter snake. “I didn’t know you was such a hardass, Wade,” he said. “Give the guy a break. If you want, I’ll tell him that by the way the local sheriff’s pissed off, but because of the circumstances and all, he’s letting this one go.”
“I’m not a sheriff, Asa.”
“I know.”
LaRiviere said, “You still got a shitload of plowing to do, Wade.”
“It ain’t done, if that’s what you mean.”
For a few seconds everyone was silent. “Something bugging you, Wade?” LaRiviere said.
“A few things. Yeah.”
“A few things. Well, right now we’re not too interested. And as for a few things, there’s a few things need taking care of first. Then you can be bugged all you want. On your own time, though, not mine.”
LaRiviere wheeled and started across the road toward his truck. Brown and the other trooper followed, heading for the cruiser.
When LaRiviere had got his truck turned around, he drew it up next to Wade; he reached across the seat and cranked down the window. “I expect I’ll see the grader gone by the time I get back to the shop, Wade. And for Christ’s sake, forget giving a fucking ticket to Mel Gordon. His father-in-law’s just killed himself. Use your fucking head,” he said.
Wade said nothing.
In a low almost whispered voice, Jack asked, “You want me to do anything in particular at the shop?”
LaRiviere hesitated a second, then said, “You might’s well take the rest of the day off. You look sort of fucked up to me. Which I can understand. You’ve already been paid for the day anyhow, right?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, he never paid me.”
“You’ll get your money,” LaRiviere said. “I’ll see you get your money. Go on home. Get drunk or something. Start over tomorrow,” he said. “And don’t talk to any newspapers about this,” he added. “Twombley’s a big deal down in Massachusetts, you know.”
“What’ll I say?”
“Just tell them the truth, for Christ’s sake, it was an accident. But forget the details. Tell them they should talk to the state police about it, if they want details. Tell them if they want details your lawyer says you shouldn’t comment.”
“My lawyer? I don’t need no lawyer, do I?”
“No. No, of course not. Just say it, that’s all.” Then he rolled up the window and drove off, with the cruiser following close behind.
The two vehicles disappeared, and it was suddenly silent, except for a light wind sifting through the pines, the ragged call of a crow in the distance, the squeak of Wade’s boots in the snow as he shifted his weight. He lit a cigarette and offered Jack one.
“I got my own,” Jack said. He rummaged in his shirt pocket for his pack, got it out and took a light from Wade’s yellow Bic.
“Did you smoke when you was playing ball?” Wade said.
“Why’s that?”
“I dunno. Just asking. I keep thinking about quitting.”
“Yeah. I smoked since I was a kid. Sure I did.”
“No shit? Even in school you smoked? I don’t remember you smoking till you come back from New Britain.”
“Sure. Coach never knew it. They had a rule. Not in the pros, of course, but in school.”
“Even in Pony League? You were smoking then?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. You was only — what? — twelve then.”
“I started when I was eleven.”
“No shit. I never knew that. I was coaching Pony League then, remember? I didn’t have no rules about it, but I didn’t think I needed them.”
Jack smiled slyly. “Sure, I remember.” Then he laughed. “You were a shitty coach, Wade. Pretty good left fielder, but a shitty coach. You oughta play some Legion ball next summer.”
“I know it.”
They were silent and both looked toward LaRiviere’s cabin in the pine grove on the rise beyond the snow-covered muskeg — the tall angular young man in the orange hunting vest and quilted jacket and the shorter man in the dark-blue trooper’s jacket and watch cap, both men with hands stuck in pockets, cigarettes in mouths, eyes squinted against the bright light reflected off the snow. They looked like cousins or a younger and an older brother, blood relations separated by two decades, one man favoring the mother, the other favoring the father, two very different men connected by thin but unbreakable ties to a common past. They stood free of the truck and seemed to be waiting for someone to emerge from the cabin, a person bringing them important news — of a birth or a death or the arrival of the absolute truth.
Without looking at Jack, Wade said, “Where’d Twombley get shot?”
“In the chest.”
“No, I mean whereabouts.”