They
pawed through their respective folders.
"Save
those for hanging up. Show the big ones without the number. Somebody
wants to keep a picture, let 'em. I've got plenty. An hour." I
checked my watch. "It's two-twenty. So three-twenty, right here.
Got it?"
They
must have. Each man trudged off in his appointed direction clutching
a folder.
Nothing
doing at either the Timberland Saw Shop or the Riggin' Room Cafe.
Friendly? Yes. Concerned? Maybe. Helpful? No. Both places let me tack
up a picture. I continued past the cafe, just in case there was
another business of some sort just up the road. Not a thing. I
retraced my steps back into Lyman, this time taking an immediate left
off Main, riding the perimeter. Lyman was a typical Northwest mill
town, twenty years after the mill closed down. Anybody with any place
to go had long since gone. What was left was just marking time.
Postwar
single-family houses originally financed by the company, never better
than adequate, now moss-encrusted, sagged in varying degrees toward
equilibrium with the natural contours of their untended yards.
Like the clear-cut scars on the sides of the surrounding
mountains, they stood in testament to simpler times. I turned right.
The closer I got to the river, the better the upkeep of the homes.
The copper-colored Skagit River blew by First Avenue, garnished with
fresh leaves and limbs, torn loose by some upriver storm. Freshly
mowed grass, well-tended shrubs along the river. Recent retirees, I
guessed, moved out to the country to fish away their golden years.
I
took a full lap and then cruised the streets looking for any trace of
the Lyman school, passing Allison Stark's picture taped to a pole on
Fourth and catching a glimpse of Harold as he backed out the front
door of a small yellow house on Second and Main. Apparently, the
school had vanished from the earth.
I
left the van at the pickup spot and showed the picture around the
post office. Nada. Norman was slouching on the front of the van as I
crossed the street to the Tavern. He'd shed his tweed overcoat and
attracted a crowd. A white-haired boy on a blue bike rode wobbly
semicircles at Norman's feet while his little sister stood agape,
looking straight up at the strange, massive apparition.
Same
thing at the Tavern. The place was so dark, the bartender had to
click on the light over the register to look at the picture. He held
it there for the patrons. No go.
"Was
the old Lyman school in that big empty area between Second and
Third?" I asked the bartender.
"Used
to be," he said.
A
little fellow on the nearest stool, green John Deere cap worn at an
angle on the very top of his head, piped in. "Till eighty-two.
Said we had to consolidate. Then they made all the kids go to Sedro
Woolley."
"Took
what damn little heart the town had left," said somebody down
the bar.
John
Deere agreed. "Even when we didn't have nothin'. We could always
beat Hamilton."
"Concrete
too sometimes," somebody added from the gloom. "We turned
out some damn good athletes.
Got
some major college scholarships. Don't usually get them for B-8
neither."
"Then
they closed us down."
The
bartender dried a glass. "Had a couple of kids get hurt in the
old building. The thing got to be an eyesore. We bulldozed it down
back in—"
"Eighty-six,"
said another voice.
"Eighty-five,"
came from the far end of the room.
"Eighty-six."
"You're
both wrong, as usual," said a rough female voice.
I
slipped out the door while they worked it out. The Boys had gathered
around the van. The kids were gone. Their expressions told me all I
needed to know.
"Nothin',"
said George as I approached.
"Anybody
else get anything useful?"
"I
got some blueberry pie," said Ralph with a grin. "A real
nice widow name of Williamson down the end of Fifth Street."
"Lyman
was founded in eighteen seventy-two by a guy named Williamson,"
said Norman. "Grew hops. Had big plans for—"
I
cut the travelogue off. "Everybody in," I hollered.
We
duplicated the process at Hamilton, where the gutted remains of the
old school building stood like a peeling Greek temple a scant block
off Pettit, the main drag. No hits. We followed the Skagit east to
Birds-view and Grassmere, both barely wide spots in the road, talking
to anyone who would talk, taping up pictures, ending up, just before
full dark, at the North Cascades Motel on the outskirts of Concrete.
I
bought us three rooms. A couple of doubles for them to share and a
single for me. Coming out of the motel office, I didn't bother to
check for them in the van. The pink neon sign said COCKTAILS. They
were bellied up to the short bar, slurping 'em down like antelope at
a water hole. I wedged myself in between George and Norman.
"Good
day's work, fellas," I said. They gargled agreement. "I've
got an idea," I said. They were wary.
"Why
don't we get some food, a bag of ice, and some cups from the store
and take it down by the river and have us a little party? It's a nice
night out. That way, you guys won't be blowing all your money in
here, and we can party to our heart's content without disturbing
anybody. We've got enough booze to float a driftboat. What say?"
They
checked with each other. Why-not faces.
George
was still parched and pissy.
"You
wouldn't be worried about our deportment now, would you, Leo? You're
afraid we can't have a few in polite company without pukin' on our
shoes. Is that it?"
Everyone
stopped swallowing and strained to hear.
"If
you guys want to stay in here and pay a couple, three bucks a shotr
that's your business. I just think we'd have a better time for a
whole lot less money, that's all."
"We?"
said George. "You mean, like his majesty is going to have a few
with the peasants?"
For
the first time all day, I had everyone's attention.
"Damn
right," I said quickly.
"We
better get to the store before it closes," said Harold.
Ralph
inhaled both ends of a fresh boilermaker and followed Norman out the
door.
I
sat on the floor in the open door of the van, gently massaging my
right knee. Norman wandered nearby, flossing his teeth with a
matchbook cover. George, Harold, and Ralph were lounging in a bed of
pink-and-white petunias, heads thrown back, catching a little sun.
For them, this was just another Thursday. I, on the other hand, felt
like I'd been threshed and baled. Squinting painfully in the clear
midmorning light, I laid out the plans for the day.
"Okay,
listen up," I started. "Don't make me repeat myself."
"He
don't look so good, do he, fellas?" joked Harold.
"A
little green around the gills, if you ask me," said George.
"Didn't
eat his breakfast neither," said Norman, who, not
coincidentally, had kindly eaten it for me.
"I
don't know how you guys do it," I confessed.
"Practice.
Practice. Practice," said Ralph.
The
only thing they liked better than drinking was talking about
drinking, about who had gotten how shitfaced, on what, with whom and
when, which in turn generally led to a nostalgic romp through the
vomiting hall of fame. I wasn't in the mood for color commentary. God
knows we'd consumed enough booze before I'd stumbled back to my room
and gone comatose. Either giant moths had gnawed out the
knee
of my jeans, or somewhere along the way, I most have taken a fall.
The crusted bruise that I'd discovered in the shower this
morning pretty much ruled out the moth hypothesis.
"George."
"Yo."
"You
and Harold and Norman are going to divide Concrete up among you.
George, you do the far end of town. The cops are right up at the end
of the street. Talk to them first. Talk to everybody. Put up as many
pictures with phone numbers as you can. It's a lot bigger than the
places we've been doing, so it's going to take a few hours."
"Seventeen
hundred people, give or take. Used to be called Cement City. Produced
forty percent of the cement used for Grand Coulee Dam."
Mercifully,
Norman stopped on his own. I rolled my eyes at George.
"Don't
look at me," he said. "You got him started on this
geography shit. I was perfectly happy with the zoo parade."
"What
am going to do?" asked Ralph
"You're
coming with me. We're going to head up to Rockport and Marblemount.
That's as far as this trip is going. The two of us ought to be able
to cover those two in about the time these guys do Concrete."
"And
then?" asked Harold.
"Then,
I'm going to buy you guys the best lunch in town and drive you back
to Seattle, where I'm going to hand each of you a bunch of money.
How's that sound?"
At
last, we had consensus.
The
Sauk River leaks out from the North Cascades like blue-white breast
milk. The same limestone deposits that attracted the Portland Cement
Company leach their sedimentary waters into the river, creating an
odd moving carpet of pearlescent opacity. The river was,
unfortunately, the highlight of the trip.
"We
struck out, huh, Leo?" said Ralph as we recrossed the Sauk on
our way back to Concrete.
"Unless
one of the guys got a hit in Concrete."
"Whatcha
gonna do if we come up dry?"
"I'm
not sure," I said. "I'm probably going to go to my client
and tell her it's over. Then maybe, depending on what she wants
to do, maybe take what I've got -to the cops."
"What'll
the cops do?"
"That's
hard to tell. Probably nothing. What I've got so far is pretty
borderline. The heat won't usually get involved unless their noses
get rubbed in it."
The
digital sign on the State Bank of Concrete blinked 1:38, 62 degrees
as we pulled back into town. As I eased the van into an empty parking
space, Norman filled the driver's-side window.
"You
guys done?" I asked.
He
nodded.
"Where's
the crew?"
His
eyes moved to the Hub Tavern and back. He pushed the button, yanked
open my door, and pressed
his
massive forehead hard against mine. He smelled of mothballs and
mildew. "The lady in the post office," he said.
She
was a stocky woman of sixty or so, prematurely purple hair cut short,
combed like a boy. She wore a striped workshirt under a brown leather
vest, blue jeans, and work boots. A deeply undershot lower jaw gave
her the aggressive profile of a largemouth bass. She was taking her
time, perusing each envelope carefully before sliding it into the
back of the appropriate mailbox.
"Didn't
say I knew for sure who she was."
"Oh,"
I said. "Norman thought—"
"Big
fella needs to take his head out," she said with finality.
I
waited, stretching out over the counter, trying vainly to establish
eye contact as she sorted mail.
"Just
said I thought I knew those eyes. She used to come in once in a while
with her momma. If it's who I'm thinking of, then she musta had her
nose fixed. When I seen her she had one of them wavy noses, like it
had been broke a bunch of times, but I remember the eyes."
"Whose
eyes did you think they were?" She stopped sorting mail and
looked at me for the first time.
"Thought
it might have been the older Hasu girl." I waited for more. It
wasn't forthcoming. "What can you tell me about her?" I
tried.
"Stubbornest
little thing I ever seen." "How's that?"
"Her
momma used to bring all them kids from the Christian school to town
on Saturday afternoons, and give each of 'em a quarter. Her momma was
the teacher. Never did like that woman. Always felt like she was
lookin' down her nose at me. All them other kids would hustle right
over to Howard's for candy, but not that one. No, sir. We used to
have this gumball machine in here. The kind where sometimes you got
gum and once in a while you'd get some little plastic prize. You
remember those?"