Crow's Landing (28 page)

Dusty looked at Virgil.

“I'm saying it's a long shot,” Janelle said. “But I don't know where else he would go, not outside the city.”

“Where in the Adirondacks?” Dusty asked.

Janelle thought. “I can't remember. One of those little lakes up there. I was never there though. It was just for the boys.”

“Would Pop take him in?” Dusty asked. “Would he take him in if he's using?”

“Pop's been dead for years. For all I know, the place isn't even there anymore.”

 * * *

“You ever been up in those mountains?” Dusty asked. “There's like a thousand lakes up there. How the fuck are we supposed to find a place called Pop's Camp that might not even exist anymore?”

They were walking back to Virgil's truck. It was full dark now and the street had taken on a different atmosphere. Dusty was glad that Virgil was along. She had never been concerned walking the neighborhood back when she was living there, but things had changed so much in the past few years. The faces were different; the vibe was different. She didn't feel part of it anymore. Lately, she didn't feel part of anything.

“Like the guy lost out in the country who asks the old-timer for directions,” Virgil said as they walked, “and the old-timer says, ‘Drive along this road here and turn left where the old maple tree used to be.'”

“Is that supposed to be helpful?” she asked.

“I can do better.”

“Yeah?” she asked doubtfully.

They were at the truck now. Virgil smiled at her over the roof as he unlocked the door. When she got in, she was still waiting.

“I said
yeah
?” she repeated.

“I can tell you where Pop's Camp is.”

“Where?”

“Place called Crow's Landing.”

“And how would you know that?” she asked. Still skeptical.

“You recall me mentioning a boat?” Virgil asked.

“Only about fifty times.”

“That's what was written across the back of it. I remember
because it took me most of a day to sand it off. So, unless there's more than one Pop's Camp in the Adirondacks, I'd say that's the place.”

“Then let's go.”

“It'll have to wait until morning now. I've got chores to do.”

“Shit,” Dusty said. She sat staring out the windshield as Virgil checked the rearview mirror for traffic. “Soup's probably not even there.”

“His sister said that's where he used to go when he was on the run. Besides, you got any other ideas?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Then we might just as well chase this one down,” Virgil said. “You want me to drop you at home?”

She hesitated and he knew she was thinking about Cherry.

“Might be better if you slept at the farm,” Virgil said. “That way we can get an early start. I got room.”

She still wouldn't look at him, and he could tell she was a little pissed that he was trying to save her again. But she also seemed a little grateful at the same time. “How do I know this isn't part of a master plan to get me alone out there?”

“Yeah, that's it,” Virgil said. “So far I've got a stolen boat, a broken arm, and a knot on my head about the size of Vermont.” He put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb. “I'm one smooth operator.”

When Virgil came in from doing the chores, he found Dusty at the stove in the kitchen, heating spaghetti sauce from a jar on one burner while some pasta boiled in a pot on another. They'd stopped at her place for a change of clothes before leaving the city and he saw that she'd changed into khaki pants and a faded cotton shirt. Her hair was damp. The sink had been half full of dirty dishes when he'd left earlier; now they were washed and sitting in the strainer.

“I used your shower,” she said.

“No problem.”

“Any idea how old this spaghetti is?” she asked, holding up the box.

“I would say … less than a year,” he estimated.

“Christ,” she said.

“Spaghetti doesn't go bad.”

“You can eat first then,” she said. “And you don't believe in washing dishes?”

“I got one arm,” Virgil said.

“Right,” she said. “I forgot about that. You wouldn't be able to do the dishes. You can bale hay, and feed cows and combine wheat. You can steal the rotor from my truck and throw it in a fucking storm sewer, but there's no way you could wash dishes.”

“That spaghetti about done?” Virgil asked.

After they ate, Virgil made a pot of coffee—another thing
he could do with one arm, Dusty pointed out—and they sat on the side porch. There was a half-moon rising and the barns and outbuildings were clearly visible across the yard. A couple of barn cats came out into the moonlight and sat cleaning themselves on the concrete pad outside the milk house. Maybe ten feet apart, typical cats, each pretending the other didn't exist.

“What's that smell?” Dusty asked.

“Probably the horses in that field yonder.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah?” Virgil said. “I always assumed your average city person didn't care for the smell of manure.”

“I'm an average city person?”

“I guess not,” Virgil said after thinking about it. He removed his Mud Hens cap, hung it on the arm of the chair, and pushed back his hair with his fingers.

“What's with the bird, anyway?” Dusty asked.

“It's a mud hen.”

“And what's that?”

“It's a bird.”

Dusty sighed. “We've established that. How come you're wearing a hat with a mud hen on it?”

“I used to play for the Toledo Mud Hens,” he told her. “This is the cap I wore.”

“And you're not allowed to wash it?”

Virgil gave the cap a look as if seeing it for the first time. “I never gave it much thought.”

“That's obvious.” She settled back in the chair, getting comfortable. “You're lucky living out here,” she said. “Just listen to that.”

“Listen to what?”

“Silence.” She took a drink of coffee. “There's no such thing
where I live. Night or day, it's never quiet.” She didn't say anything for a time. “I have to get out of there. I have to get my son out of there. Before it's too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For everything.”

“Well, it looks like your sister managed it,” Virgil said.

Dusty, her head tilted back against the chair, nodded.

“She's a tough nut, isn't she?” Virgil said. “She looked at me like I was running a Ponzi scheme.”

“Big sisters are protective.”

“She was protecting you from me?”

“From everybody. You just landed in her sights.” Dusty glanced over. “She's a little judgmental at times but I owe her … everything. She's been a second mother to Travis. Actually, she was his first mother. I had him when I was in stir. Julie took him home and raised him until I got out, two years later. You want to talk about fucked-up meetings. Try walking up to a two-year-old and saying, ‘Hi, I'm your mother. I just got out of prison.' He's already walking and talking. He's already his own little person. And you have to try to fit yourself into his life without freaking him out.”

“He seems okay,” Virgil said. “I mean, the kid could use a jar of neatsfoot oil, but I wouldn't say that makes you a bad mother.”

Dusty smiled, looking across the yard to the barn and the cats lolling in the light. She sipped at her coffee.

“I looked for your computer while I was waiting for the water to boil,” she said after a while. “I wanted to Google Crow's Landing.”

“I don't have a computer,” Virgil said.

“I figured that when I didn't find one.”

“What would I do with a computer?”

“You could Google Crow's Landing.”

Virgil shrugged and drank his coffee. The cattle in the back pasture, out of sight of the house, began to moan and the lowing floated across the air. Dusty turned her head toward the sound; it seemed to take a moment before she recognized it.

“Place might not be easy to find,” Dusty said, glancing back to Virgil. “It's probably not even the name of a town. Shit, it might just be a spot where a guy named Crow landed a boat a hundred years ago. How we going to find it?”

“We will.”

“So you know where to find it?”

“Nope,” Virgil said. “But I know where to find a guy who does. I don't need to gurgle anything.”

“Google.”

“That either.”

“Okay.” She shook her head, as if Virgil was being obstinate and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of an argument.

“What's your real name?” Virgil asked. “Even your sister calls you Dusty.”

“It is my real name,” Dusty replied, again watching across the yard. “My mother was a singer, a professional actually, for a while anyway. Sang under the name Irma Lachance. Her real name was Betty Saunders. Anyway, she was a blues singer, pretty good too, I guess, sang in a couple of clubs in Jersey. Atlantic City once, some blues festival. And she worshipped Dusty Springfield. So that's how I got the name.”

“‘Son of a Preacher Man.'”

“You're not going to sing to me, are you?” she asked.

“You've been through enough,” Virgil said.

Dusty, smiling, sipped her coffee.

“What happened to your mother?”

“She was a drunk and she died.”

Virgil glanced over at her. She was still staring straight ahead, holding the cup with both hands, up near her face. After a moment she exhaled and turned to him, looking to shift topics. “So where's your wife, Mr. Cain? What's she going to say when she gets home and sees me?”

“I don't have a wife.”

“No?” Dusty feigned surprise. “I guess that Lady Schick on the edge of the tub is yours then. Along with a few other feminine touches I noticed. How often do you shave your legs anyway?”

“For Chrissakes.”

“Well?”

“I have a friend …” Virgil began awkwardly.

“A friend?” Dusty repeated. “What, she comes over to use your bathtub? Where is she now?”

“France. Why do you need to know this?”

“Hey, you wanted to know everything about me. Turnabout is fair play, dude.” She was smiling now. “What's she doing in France?”

“Visiting long-lost relatives.”

“She didn't invite you along?”

“No.” Virgil realized for the first time that Claire hadn't asked him to go with her. Not that he could have gone, with the harvest and everything else. Still, she could have asked.

“Too bad,” Dusty said, looking out over the yard again. “If you were in Europe, you wouldn't have been on the river that day. And none of this would be happening. What does she do, your friend?”

“She's a cop.”

Dusty turned to him. “You're kidding me. Does she know about all this? Have you talked to her?”

“I talked to her. She doesn't know.”

Dusty fell quiet while she deliberated. “Okay. You didn't tell her. And the reason you didn't tell her is because she would have given you good advice. Like, forget about your goddamn boat and tell the cops about the cylinder. Why do I get the feeling you're not real good at taking advice?”

“I had no idea you were such an expert on me.”

Dusty laughed. “I'm getting there.”

Virgil stood and tossed his remaining coffee onto the grass, then turned and went into the house. When he came back he was carrying a bottle of Jameson and a couple of glasses. He poured for them both.

Dusty was still smiling. “Giving me liquor so I'll quit asking about your love life?”

“Worth a try,” Virgil said, sitting down. “So you want to leave the city. What's keeping you?”

Dusty tried a little of the Irish whisky. “Money,” she said. “I want to buy a house and I don't have enough for a down payment. I could swing the mortgage payments. I'm already paying rent, wouldn't be much different. But I need money down.”

“No boyfriend?”

“No.”

Virgil took a sip and savored the whisky on his tongue before swallowing. In the pasture field by the barn, the horses were walking toward the water trough. They always came in a bunch, never in ones or twos. It was the herd mentality, Virgil assumed, from the days when horses ran wild and were wary of predators. Nowadays it wasn't really necessary but apparently the instinct remained. Horses were safe in the
modern world. Safer than people in some respects. He had another drink and then asked, “Does Parson know that Travis is his son?”

Dusty had her glass halfway to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, then she took a healthy slug. “There you go, being smart again.”

The moon crossing the sky dropped just enough to shine fully on her face beneath the eave of the porch. She looked like a kid sitting there. A kid with a lot of weight on her shoulders.

“No, he doesn't know,” she said slowly. “And I don't want him to know. If he finds out, I'm fucked. He'll take Travis away from me. There is no doubt in my mind about that.” She stared straight ahead, her eyes defiant. “He can't find out.”

“The courts would never give him custody.”

“The courts won't be involved,” Dusty said flatly.

“And you're sure he doesn't know.”

She took another drink, needing it now to address the situation. “No, I'm not. I think he might suspect something.”

“That's why you want to leave the city.”

“I was looking for a house before all this,” she said. “This ups the ante. Through the roof.”

Virgil looked at the liquor in his glass, thinking. “So he's been out of your life since that night on the boat?”

“Yeah.”

“And then I find the cylinder and suddenly he's back in your life.”