Wolf Point Page 18

  “I think so,” T said.

  Lester said, “You know who I am?”

  T said, “I know who you are. I’m okay. I think I might have half fallen asleep.”

  “That’s good,” Lester said. “You know why you’re out here, T?”

  T nodded. “Because I downloaded the wrong picture.”

  Lester leaned back and laughed.

  “Jesus,” Jenny said. “You’re both out of it.”

  Lester opened the guitar case, found the bag of pills, and pulled out two more black ones. He handed them to T. “Take these,” he said. “You need these, buddy. One ain’t doing the trick.”

  Jenny said, “What are you giving him?”

  “What the fuck do I know?” Lester said. “All I know is, three of these things he should be feelin’ no pain.”

  T took the pills. When he tried to swallow them, he gagged and Jenny scooped up a handful of river water and spilled it gently into his mouth. The water was soothing and the pills went down. “Thank you,” he said, and he gestured toward the open guitar case. “Snap that closed,” he said. “Will you, please?”

  Jenny closed the guitar case and snapped it shut. She said, “How come you’re so worried about this guitar, T?”

  T shrugged. He didn’t know why. It was beautiful. It was something beautiful in the boat with them.

  Lester said, “Ronnie bought that guitar in New York. She tell you that?”

  T shook his head.

  “Bought it from a guy said he was a classical musician.”

  Jenny said, “Ronnie tell you that story?”

  “Claimed to pay a thousand dollars for it. This back 1960.”

  “He did,” Jenny said. “Babs said he did. She said he came back from New York broke and with the guitar.”

  “Guy was playin’ in the subway. He couldn’t believe how good.”

  “He was always the sweet one,” Jenny said. “He was the one would take care of us.”

  “You remember that?” Lester said. “You remember how he’d come around and get me sometimes?”

  Jenny closed her eyes and sighed as if despairing.

  “He’d come around and get me when Daddy on a drunk. He’d take me out campin’ by the lake. Sometimes I live in that trailer out there with him a week ’fore I could go home.”

  Jenny said, “Jesus, Lester. You’re telling me this like I wasn’t out there with you half the time.”

  T imagined the two of them as a pair of ragged kids playing together by the water, climbing trees in their worn-out sneakers and dirty jeans.

  Lester was quiet a while, looking off at nothing. Then he turned to Jenny again, his eyes dark and narrowed to a glare. “Why you doin’ me like this?” he said. “Jenny? Why’d you do me this way?”

  “Lester, honey,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he said. “You got no respect for me. You show me no respect. You think I’m stupid.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t think anything like that.”

  “You know how I know when you lyin’, Jenny?”

  “No, Lester,” she said, indulging him. “How do you know when I’m lying?”

  “When I see your lips movin’.

  “You’re just being mean,” she said. “You don’t believe that.”

  Fuck I don’t,” he said. “Whether T here gives us the money or not won’t make no difference for me ’n’ you know it. Willie’ll kill me anyway, and you think I’m too stupid. You walk me right back there like I mean nothin’, like I never meant nothin’ to you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Fuck it ain’t.” He raised his voice to T. “I’m askin’ you again, T? You know why you out here?”

  T’s head felt a little clearer, some of the stuffiness gone and the sense of being dazed diminishing. “Not really, I guess,” he answered. “I guess I don’t really know why I’m out here.”

  “You out here because of Chucky,” he said, looking at Jenny. “The dude whose cabin this is,” he went on, turning to T. “He’s why you out here.”

  Jenny said, “What’s Chuck got to do with it? What’s going on in your drugged-up head, Lester?”

  “Chuck’s got to do with it is he put you up to it. You think I didn’t know all along, Jenny? You think I’m that dumb?”

  “Is that what you think happened? Oh, Christ, Lester— Is that what you think happened?”

  “Is that what I think?” Lester echoed Jenny. “Them Mexicans, Les. They won’t give you no trouble.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Lester. How could I have known what they’d do?”

  “Shit.” Lester spit over the side of the boat, as if he were angry at the river. He leaned back on the engine and looked past Jenny to T. “Me robbin’ Short Willie,” he said. “I’m not that crazy. I did it ’cause I knew her uncle Chuck behind it, and I figured he might could pull it off. Chuck the biggest slime bag around. Sum’ bitch the biggest crook in Tennessee.”

  “So what?” Jenny said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “So what if you’re right? How’s that change anything?”

  “You set me up’s how it change things.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did. And you doin’ it again, go back there and get killed and you run back here to him.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lester.” Jenny looked over the side of the boat as if she were considering jumping out. “I can’t talk sense to you when you’re like this. What in hell would there be in it for me if I set you up? You don’t get the money, I don’t get the money. What in hell reason would I have for setting you up? Chuck said we could make five, six thousand apiece. You’re right about that, okay? He did. I didn’t tell you that I knew about the Mexicans from Chuck because he told me not to tell you. He said what you didn’t know couldn’t come back to bite you, and I took him at his word.”

  “That always a mistake,” Lester said.

  “Why would I set you up, Les? Will you ask yourself that? What possible reason could I have?”

  “Not just you settin’ me up,” Lester said. “Chuck doin’ it through you and you playin’ along.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Les.”

  “Let me ask you this,” he said. He paused a second and stared at her. It was as if they had forgotten T was in the boat. Their eyes were fixed on each other. “Let me ask you this,” he repeated. “It occurred to you he might could be setting you up too? He might could plan this whole thing to happen just the way it happen? He figure I come runnin’ to you. He figure Willie find out me and you in it together.”

  “Why?” She threw up her hands. “Why, Les?”

  T picked up the guitar case and held it to his chest. He wrapped his arms around the neck and supported himself with it. “Lester,” he said, “maybe I can help.”

  Lester’s eyes were sad. He looked incredibly tired. “They ain’t no help anymore, T. Kinda sorry you out here now. I was startin’ to like you.”

  “I was thinking, money,” T said. “I could—”

  “You not all that bad.”

  “Answer me,” Jenny said. “Why would Chuck do something like that to me?”

  “That a good question, Jenny. Why would Uncle Chuck do you that way?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why would he? You know something I don’t?”

  “Let me ask you this, Jenny. D’you ever wonder why Johnny kept them pictures of you? Of his own daughter?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t. He was a man. Men are like that.”

  Lester’s face twisted up sour. “He was your father.”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “That don’t matter,” Lester said. “He was your father, and I don’t think he had them to look, like everyone said.”

  “You don’t? You got a different theory?”

  “Chuck stopped hangin’ around with you, didn’t he? I’m told Chuck stopped turning up with you places like
he used to.”

  “What are you trying to say, Les? Spit it out.”

  “I don’t think Johnny was lookin’ at those pictures. He never struck me a sick sum’ bitch like his brother.”

  “So what do you think, then? Let’s hear it.”

  Lester looked away from Jenny, first at T and then out to the water and up to the stars and then back to T. He seemed to be recalling where they were, out on the Saint Lawrence, a mild October night under a bright field of stars in a small boat with a man he’d shot. “I think Johnny must’ve stole them pictures away from Chuck. I think he kept those pictures to blackmail him,” he said softly, almost reluctantly. “To make him stay ’way from you,” he added. “To make him leave you ’lone.”

  It took Jenny a minute to respond, and in the silence a breeze rippled over the water and rushed through the boat, pushing her hair off her face and wrapping her dress tight to her body. She nodded to Lester, as if to say he was right. “And to extort money from him,” she added. “So he could drink it up and spend it on whores, like he always did.”

  “Jenny,” Lester said, his voice dropping into a deeper register, coming from someplace low in his body. “He’s your uncle, Jenny. The bastard your uncle.”

  “No, he’s not,” she said. “You know that.”

  “But you didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t know that until the trial. And it don’t matter anyway.”

  “Yes, it does,” she said. “And I did know. I’ve known since I was thirteen that Johnny wasn’t my father and Chuck wasn’t my uncle. Chuck told me, first time, when I was thirteen.”

  Lester stared at her in silence a long moment. “Since you were thirteen,” he said. “That how long it been going on?”

  “Since I was thirteen.”

  Lester looked deeply sad. He shook his head. “Hey, T?” he said, and he pointed out over the gunwale. “That the ocean out that way?”

  T looked out where he was pointing, down the center of the wide channel, east toward the ocean. He nodded.

  Lester squeezed the bulb on the gas-tank line a few times and then positioned himself to pull back on the engine cord.

  “What are you doing?” Jenny asked.

  “What’s it look like?” He pulled the cord and the engine started easily.

  “So what did any of that have to do with why Chuck might set us up?” The boat started moving, and Jenny pushed her hair off her forehead and held it out of her face with one hand pressed flat over the top of her head. “You think he knew they’d rob you, the Mexicans?” she said. “You think he knew Willie’d come after both of us? That’s what you’re saying?”

  T wanted to interrupt them a moment, just long enough to tell Jenny how beautiful she looked that way, with her hair pushed back, in the moonlight, the wind riffling her dress.

  Lester said, “I’m nothin’ but shit to you.” He leaned a little closer to Jenny, as if to be sure she’d hear him over the growl of the engine. “Chuck’s disrespected and fucked with you your whole life,” he said, “and you in love with that ugly son of a bitch.”

  Jenny said, “You got a simple mind, Lester. You think everything’s simple.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I’m seeing clear now. I’m inside it now,” he said. “Now it all perfectly clear.”

  “You’re spun, Les. That’s the only thing perfectly clear.”

  Lester’s face seemed to sink into itself. He looked suddenly old and worn as he leaned still closer to Jenny. “He tired of you,” he said. “You weren’t so blind about him, you’d see it too. You come back to town, go back to school. You expectin’ that job he been promising you since forever…” He stopped and wiped away sweat from his upper lip. “He tired of you, Jenny. He got rid of you. That’s all. He tired of you and he got rid of you and it don’t mean nothin’ someone like him someone like me gets killed. And don’t hurt either he’ll make a few dollars in the deal.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jenny said. “That’s just crazy.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “Once you get clear about things, it obvious really.” He sat back on the transom with the engine rudder in his left hand and steered the boat out toward the ocean. “It all perfectly clear to me now,” he said. “I ain’t shit to you, I ain’t never been. I see that now. It clear now. You twisted around that evil fuck and he played you and I got played with you. That’s all. That’s all this is.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Chuck wouldn’t do that to me.” She looked out over the bow. “What are you doing, Les?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

  Lester said, “You so sad, Jenny.” While she was still looking away from him, out to the ocean, he put the gun to her forehead almost gently and held it with both hands as he fired. Her body flew over the side and into the river and he turned to watch as it fell behind them and only when it had disappeared under the water did he look back to T.

  At the sight of Lester pulling out the gun, T had used the guitar as a crutch and partially lifted himself to his feet. Then he fell back at the gunshot, so that he was sitting on the bow with his arms wrapped tightly around the neck of the guitar case.

  Lester said, “It a sordid life,” and raised the gun listlessly.

  T jumped back and then fell off the boat and into the water with the guitar case. He watched the engine roar past as he followed the path of the boat, expecting it to turn around and come back for him. Instead, the engine roared louder and the bow lifted higher and then there was another flash and the pop of the gun firing and Lester flying backward over the transom and disappearing instantly in the boat’s wake.

  Alongside T, the guitar case floated top up, the snaps six inches above water. T grasped it under his good arm and found that he could lean most of his weight on it without submerging the snaps. He laid his head down on the hard plastic and watched the little sliver of aluminum boat until it finally disappeared into the darkness, leaving him alone with the silence and the water and the raging stars.

  . 4 .

  When he leaned a little to the right, sliding his cheek along the wet plastic of the guitar case, he could see the hole in his chest. Hours ago the last scrap of bandage had floated away, revealing raw, puckered skin around a blood-black, dime-sized puncture in the alarming vicinity of his heart. He clutched the guitar case, careful to keep the snaps above water. All night it had carried him through the darkness, holding to the surface of the Saint Lawrence so resolutely he thought the thing could be marketed as a life preserver—as long as he kept the water out of it, kept the sea from seeping into it. He concentrated on that, on keeping the guitar case flat as he floated through the last minutes of night, his eyes on the horizon, waiting for the sun to emerge out of the river. It was easier now to keep the guitar case level, now that morning was near and the sea was so still it reflected the stars and the moon, now that the wind had died down to nothing. Earlier, in the deep hours of night, he had struggled to keep hold, his arm wrapped tightly around the solid plastic case as wind slicked his hair against his head and whipped the surface of the water into froth. He had fought all night to hold on, aided by Lester’s black pills, which were wearing off now. He could feel them wearing off, and as their effects faded, so did his strength. As first light neared, he clung to the guitar case with the mild hope of being seen. He reminded himself that this was the Saint Lawrence Seaway and many ships traveled these lanes, and if he could just hold on till it was fully light, if he could keep his one good arm wrapped tightly around the guitar case and keep the thing flat so the water wouldn’t get in, if he could keep it from tilting and hold on a little longer it would be light soon, and he was floating in the shipping lanes and he might be seen. He told himself that he had held on already through the night and the sky was growing lighter as the stars faded, though the moon was still bright. But it was getting harder. His body wanted to loosen its grip and his mind had to have a talk with it. He had to explain. Morning was coming. It would be light. A ship might see him.

  Night ha
d seemed endless. Lester was right, though: through the long hours, thanks to the black pills, he had felt no pain. But neither was his mind right. On and off he had slipped into a kind of waking dream: the hard black guitar case once became a downy white pillow and his head sank into it as it shaped itself to the contours of his face. For a brief moment, the guitar turned into a boat pulling him to shore. At another point, the neck of the guitar was a corridor he swam into out of rough water, like swimming onto a beach, only when he lifted himself up out of the waves he was at the head of a long hallway, bathed in reddish light. He shook the sea from his body and found himself dry and dressed comfortably in jeans and T-shirt. Barefoot, he walked in the red light and he knew the corridor was actually the neck of the guitar and he was walking toward a place he all along had been meant to find, a place that was like a mountain in sunlight or a meadow thick with wildflowers, a place that sang to him, a place where he was meant to look, to smell, to hear, to touch, and he walked toward it along the red corridor only to find himself suddenly again out on the black water with a stinging mist blowing into his eyes, struggling to keep from drowning, to keep from joining Lester and Jenny at the bottom of the river.

  He imagined them, Lester and Jenny, floating alongside each other, their bodies bouncing lazily off rocks, bumping along the bottom pushed by currents, their long hair trailing behind them, rippling luxuriously strand by strand, rising and falling in the deep water’s swells. He saw Jenny’s beautiful hair. He saw her watery eyes open, still looking east over the river, wondering where Lester was taking her. She had no idea what was coming. None at all. She was only looking out over the river and wondering where they were going. In the riled water, holding on for his life, T mumbled, “What chance did she ever have?” and he was thinking not only of that final moment on the boat but of her life. He thought, She was seduced and betrayed while she was still a child, and a moment later he found himself recalling the pornographic image he had downloaded, the one that had started all his trouble, and then he was there, inside that trailer, just outside the frame of the image, as if in a kind of cosmic dark that surrounded the real world or in a shadowy darkness beyond the lighted image.