Some years ago, I was watching some special on TV, and the announcer described something as being a "transitional technology." It was the railroads I think he was talking about. Something. And the idea seemed to be, a transitional technology was the cumbersome old way people used to do things before they got to the easy sensible way they do things now. And the further idea was, look how much time and effort and expense was put into something that was just a temporary stopgap; railroad bridges, canals.
But everything is a transitional technology, that's what I'm beginning to figure out. Maybe that's what makes it impossible sometimes. Two hundred years ago, people knew for certain they would die in the same world they were born into, and it had always been that way. But not any more. The world doesn't just change these days, it upheaves, constantly. We're like fleas living on a Dr. Jekyll who's always in the middle of becoming Mr. Hyde.
I can't change the circumstances of the world I live in. This is the hand I've been dealt, and there's nothing I can do about it. All I can hope to do is play that hand better than anybody else. Whatever it takes.
At Utica, I take Route 8 north. It goes all the way to Watertown and the Canadian border, but I don't. I stop at Lichgate.
A factory town on the Black River. Prosperity, and the factory, left this town a long time ago; more transitional technology. Who knows what used to be manufactured in that great brick pile of a building that molders now beside the river. The river itself is narrow but deep, and very black, and is crossed by a dozen small bridges, all of them at least sixty years old.
Bits of the ground floor of the old factory have been kept more or less alive, converted to shops — antique, coffee, card — and a county museum. People making believe they're at work, now that there is no work.
My road atlas doesn't include a town map of Lichgate. It's after one when I get to town, so first I have lunch in the Red Brick Cafe, tucked into a corner of the old factory building, and then I buy a map of the area in the card shop down the block.
(I know it would be easier simply to ask directions to Nether Street, but what's the chance I would be remembered, as the stranger who asked the way to Nether Street just before the murder on Nether Street? Very strong chance, I should think. The idea of seeing myself on TV in an artist's rendition from eyewitness accounts is not appealing.)
From the name, I would have guessed Nether Street would run along beside the river, that being the lowest part of town, but on the map I see it's a street that borders the southern city line eastward over to the river. When I drive over there, I see that the hill the town is built on slopes down to the south, this way, and Nether Street got its name because it runs along the base of that hill.
This area is neither suburban nor rural, but an actual town, and this a residential area, old and substantial, the houses mostly a hundred years old, built back when the factory was still turning out whatever it was. They are wide two-story houses on small plots, made mostly of native stone, with generous porches and steep A roofs because of the very snowy winters.
When these houses were built, the managers would have lived here, middle management from the factory, although I don't think they called it middle management back then. But that's who they would have been, along with the shop owners and the dentists. A solid comfortable life in a stable neighborhood. None of those people would have believed for a second that the world they lived in was transitional.
264 is like its neighbors, wide and solid and stone. There are no mailboxes out by the roadside here, but mail slots in front doors or small iron mailboxes hung beside the door. The mailman will walk. And the roadside isn't a roadside, but a curb.
There's a sidewalk as well, and when I first drive down the block a father is using that sidewalk to teach his scared but game daughter how to ride a two-wheeler. I see them, and I think, Don't let that be EBD. But in the resume he described himself as having "three nearly-grown children."
Most of these houses have garages that were added decades after the houses were built, and most of them are free-standing, beside or behind the house and not attached to it, though here and there, because of those rough winters, people have built enclosed passageways to connect house with garage.
264 has a detached garage, an old-fashioned one with two large doors that open outward, though right now they're closed. It's on the right side of the house, and just behind it, with a blacktop driveway that's crumbling here and there, overdue for a touchup. In the driveway is an orange Toyota Camry, a few years old. No one is visible anywhere around the house.
Three blocks farther on, closer to the river, Nether Street crosses a main north-south road, and there's a gas station. I stop there, fill the tank, and use the pay phone to call EBD.
A male voice answers, on the third ring: "Hello?"
Trying to sound very cheerful and friendly, I say, "Hi, Everett?"
"Yes, hello," he says.
"This is Chuck," I say. "By golly, Everett, I didn't think I'd ever track you down."
"I'm sorry," he says. "Who?"
"Chuck," I say. "Everett? This is Everett Jackson."
"No, I'm sorry," he says. "You've got the wrong number."
"Oh, damn," I say. "I'm sorry, I beg your pardon."
"That's all right. Good luck," he says.
I hang up, and go back to the Voyager.
There's no trouble parking in this neighborhood. Parked cars take up about half the curb space on the westbound side, facing away from the river, as I am now. There's no parking at all on the other side, where EBD's house is, the street not being that wide. It would have been laid out before there were cars.
The horse: a transitional technology.
I park almost a block away from 264, in front of a house with a For Sale sign on the lawn and no curtains in the windows. Today I'm not trying to pretend I'm a potential buyer, I simply don't want a housewife peering out at me from behind her blinds, wondering who that is, just sitting there in his car in front of her house.
EBD is home. Sooner or later he'll come out. The Luger is under the raincoat on the passenger seat. If he drives off in the Camry, I'll pull up beside him at a red light and shoot him from the car. If he comes out to mow his lawn, I'll walk across the street and shoot him there. One way or another, when he comes out, I'll shoot him.
On the drive, all the long time coming up, I never thought about EBD or what I had to do here. I just thought about historical forces and all that stuff. But now, seated in the Voyager, watching the front of that house, all I think about is EBD. Quick and clean, and get it over with. Get the bad taste of the Ricks experience out of my mouth. Make this one simple, like Everly.
Quarter to four. The father and daughter and bicycle have long gone. The mailman has walked down the block, pushing his three-wheeled cart with the long handle. Clouds have come in from the west, and it's getting cool inside the Voyager.
I am patient. I am a leopard in the shadow of a boulder. I can stay here, without moving, until the night comes. And then, when it's dark, if he still hasn't emerged from his house, I will go in after him.
That is, I will circle the house on foot, I will look in the windows, I will find him and shoot him. I won't actually go indoors unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then with extreme caution. I have no desire to meet the wife, or the three almost-grown children.
I'll adapt myself to circumstance, but I am determined…