The river reappeared again at the bottom of a steep embankment, narrow now and shimmering like silver coins flowing from an upended sack. Light penetrating through rifts in the thick canopy showed pale green water braided with pearl foam. After the road climbed higher and leveled out, the river spread open again and moved slower. On a treeless acre they saw a cedar shingled building sitting near the edge of the bank, a cloud of wood smoke curling between the vehicles parked in the graveled lot. Two pickup trucks sat with drying crusts of mud, a tan Cadillac with mildew-blackened roof rot they knew belonged to an ex-minister who’d fallen on hard times. Duane’s Camaro was parked there too, fishing rods poking out the backseat window.
Ann had immediately pulled onto the next shoulder and stopped.
“Shit. I didn’t agree to this …”
“It’s going to be okay,” James said. “A couple drinks first isn’t going to hurt nobody.”
“I didn’t want to go fishing with that fool in the first place. I was only trying to be nice. Thought I’d surprise Kate with some rainbows for dinner.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on him. We’ve all got our problems to deal with.”
“Well I’m glad to see the two of you have grown so close. Maybe he’ll give you a job as his lookout and you’ll actually get paid.”
“I know it was wrong what he did back then. But I think he’s really sorry about it. I know he wants to patch things up with you.”
“Give me a break. Duane is a classic narcissist. In his world we’re nothing but paper cutouts and you know it.”
When they’d walked in he was already holding court. A double shot of Cuervo glittered in front of him while he sucked at a Marlboro. His captive audience pretended to be attentive, on the off chance that Duane was flush and would soon be buying drinks for the privilege. What they didn’t know was that Duane was expecting them to spot him a few. The bartender, a big sullen man whom Ann had seen walking his dog on the beach while she was running, took little effort to hide his wariness. Well informed of his customer’s sketchy behavior, he’d seemed readied at first to punish Duane for the slightest infraction. But it was Sunday night and the bar was dead, would be until ladies night on Tuesday-not that there were a lot of women willing to make the trip out here. So long as he pays his tab, let the guy bullshit as much as he wants.
When it didn’t look like Duane was going to stop drinking, Ann and James left for a well known fishing hole less than a mile away. They’d still managed to catch some plump hatchery trout before it got too dark. Not a lot of flavor, but if you dusted them with enough salt and fried them in butter you could eat them with their crunchy skins on.
Duane had showed up close to sunset, chain smoking and shaky, his right eye swollen shut and a bleeding incisor hanging askew. He’d apologized for not coming with them to fish, but business was business and you couldn’t pass it up when it dared to fall into your lap. As he’d leaned against the Camaro for support he told them he was going to be late for some appointments in Portland if he didn’t leave soon. There’d be no time to go back to the motel to check on Traci and he’d asked Ann if she and James would mind checking on her, it would really help him out. He’d tried to give her some money to go out somewhere nice for dinner and she’d pushed his hand away.
It was after ten when they found Traci running barefoot down the middle of 101, hysterical and soaked to the bone. Somehow they’d talked her into getting into Ann’s car and they’d driven her back to the motel and on the way she’d told them where Duane hid his money, how she’d followed him around the back of his mother’s house to the wooden tool shed where he kept it stashed in empty varnish cans. When they got her back in bed James had rolled her a joint to calm her down, hoping she would fall asleep. But Traci kept talking non-stop as if she were in a trance, telling them secrets about how Duane would sometimes cooperate with the police when he got caught, give up names so he wouldn’t serve any time.
They’d first waited a week to see if Traci would remember what she’d said to them, if she’d told Duane about it-and yet she could only recall running barefoot down 101, how a few cars had slowed next to her and asked if she needed help and when she’d peered inside she’d seen that the cars were packed with the very demons whom she’d heard trolled highways in search of souls. When James arranged to met Duane to buy some pot for a few friends, Duane only thanked him for checking in on Traci and never brought the night up again.
Knowing Duane, it still wasn’t any guarantee that Traci hadn’t said anything to him or that he wasn’t suspicious. James began to imagine it might be a trap or that Duane had simply moved his stash elsewhere and for several weeks they tried to forget about the whole thing until one night Ann had seen Duane and Traci come in to buy snacks at the store, headed to Portland so Traci could see her kid.
They’d waited until his mother was asleep. The shed wasn’t even locked, and the money was exactly where Traci had said it would be.
Chapter 27
Mikhail never rode in cars again after an accident outside of New York City, when his young driver had panicked on black ice and sent them careening down a sharp ravine. The driver had died on impact, and Mikhail had remained trapped until the following morning, held in by his crushed legs. Wedged sideways between granite boulders several feet above ground, the door below him had popped open during their descent, allowing a bone chilling wind to work its way inside. Water leaked from the trunk and turned to icicles. It smelled chlorinated, as if it had come from a swimming pool.
He was certain he’d lost an eye, had detected a narrowing of vision and a stinging wetness, but could lift neither hand to his face since both arms appeared to be shattered at the elbow. Shock must have drawn a protective shroud over his body because he hadn’t felt much pain, was thankful for nature’s mercy. There was nothing to be done but wait for help to arrive, and for several hours he drifted in and out of consciousness-not the same as finding oneself dozing on and off on a warm park bench, but something grander and more terrifying, as if he were on a train traversing a vast night plain and coming to only when he heard the harsh cry of its whistle. He hadn’t known the train was real, not until the hammering light of morning when he was being loaded into an ambulance on the road above and heard it a final time, saw the brown-blur of it passing behind a stand of birches with peeled bark ruffling in the wind like pages of ancient text.
During the night he’d also heard dogs howling in the distance, and when he’d glanced down through the open door he saw an old Russian woman he once knew gazing up from below. She’d died years ago, but Mikhail still had tender memories of her, of when he’d sit next to her in the park, listening to her talk about Russia while she fed pigeons as plump as first year turkeys, some of which wound up in her stew pot when money was tight. While Mikhail waited for help in his leather upholstered cocoon-there was no hope of ever freeing his legs and much less crawling out of the ravine-the old woman built a pillow of dried leaves and got comfortable. Soon a trio of scruffy coyotes appeared at her side and sat also.