The River Burns (21 page)

“Oh, you talk to God now?”

“As if, Denny. As if. Same difference. I talked to the forest. And the forest said, ‘Go, have a pleasant chat with Denny O'Farrell. He's your man.' I just want to remind you that even a trucker driving down a back road is vulnerable. I wanted to make that point. Tell me I've made my point, Denny, and we can clear this fire away. You can get on with your day's work, and I can get on with life.”

In his gaze, Denny relayed a variety of emotional responses, many more subtle than his underlying agitation. “I appreciate the intervention, Skootch.”

“Good.”

“I'll give you this one. For old time's sake and because we both play ball. A man who plays ball can't be so bad. But if you ever threaten me again, I feel compelled to promise you that it's the last threat you'll make in reasonable health. Plus you can kiss the hardball season good-bye. Maybe someday you'll recover enough for slow pitch. Mostly, you'll be nothing but aches and pains.”

“Don't be that way, Denny. We see eye to eye, don't you realize that yet?”

“On what, pray God Almighty, do we see eye to eye?”

Skootch quit the Napoleon pose and entwined his arms over his chest. Perhaps caused by the warmth of the crackling fire thin streaks of perspiration stained his cheeks. “Think about it. I believe that a forest needs to be protected, and I will do what I need to do when the time comes to protect that forest. Or any forest. You have similar concerns in your life, and you are willing to do what needs to be done. Your job, for instance. Providing for that big family of yours. Isn't that right? We see eye to eye on protecting what we believe is necessary. That makes us more alike than you know. It's just too bad that we disagree on what's necessary. Otherwise, Denny, we'd carry on as best friends. Don't you think so? Be honest now. I know that you're not the enemy you pretend to be.”

Denny stood and stretched a little, not a stance that showed him to be itching for a fight, but neither was it a body language that indicated any backing down. “This is where I want us to agree, Skootch. I want that fire cleared away without you burning the woods down.”

“Denny, Denny, I've come prepared for that.” He stepped closer, bravely. “That's what I hope you'll take away from this meeting. The knowledge that I come prepared. I am prepared. You need to take that into your deliberations, whatever they may be. I'm not threatening, Denny. I'm just saying. For every action, there is a reaction. It's a law of physics and it's a law of the freaking universe. In life, there are consequences. You have to consider them. I know things didn't go your way last night, that that might cause you to do something rash. A rash O'Farrell is not a pretty sight to see. Think of this as a preemptive strike, my way of asking you to shape up and fly right.”

The two men stared at each other. Then Skootch broke off the contact and went back into the woods. He was gone ten seconds and Denny was thoroughly mystified. He reemerged with a rake and a midsized fire extinguisher. First he broke the fire down.

“So it was the haircut?” Skootch asked.

“That was the tip-off. He's not one of your kind. That's why I walked him.”

Then Skootch sprayed the timbers with white foam and the flames went out. Denny didn't wait for him to clear the charred debris away, although the skinny man seemed willing to do that, too. He climbed back into his cab and drove his rig over the smouldering fire and on into the shaded forest light.

He drove carefully, under his preferred limit, a deliberate device so that the anger ripe in his chest would not be steering this mammoth rig, nor would the full-blown temper inside him be stepping on the gas.

■   ■   ■

Home, Mrs. McCracken pulled out
her special paper from the drawer in her writing desk. Pastel daisies cascaded down the left margin. She was careful to make the date legible. “On such documents, Buck,” she reminded her cat, “the date—whichever is the latest—is exceedingly important.” She made notations on a pad beside her, then did a proper version, in elegant cursive, onto the sheet. When she wrote, “of sound mind and body,” she warned Buck not to laugh.

15

A
mere fingernail of gibbous moon would rise, but later, while in the interim the night remained dark. Clothing they wore blended with the deepening shadows. Riding on the bed of Denny's truck, Xavier Lapointe started out standing until Denny stopped and poked his head out the window to tell him that he made the pickup look more conspicuous that way, so he sat on the metal floor, only partially out of sight but drawing no particular attention to himself. André Gervais rode in the cab and repeatedly wiped his brow with the top of his ball cap then put the ball cap back on. Then he took it off again. Denny was expecting his pal to be talkative and hoped he might lighten the mood, but André, the aggressive gabber among them, turned laconic. They stopped outside Samad Mehra's house, where they witnessed their initial mistake.

The trucker twisted in the doorway to kiss his wife good night.

“Oh shit,” André noted.

“How ignorant can a man get?” Denny pondered aloud and watched as Jocelyn Mehra gave them a friendly wave, which answered his question.

Xavier leapt off the back of Denny's truck to drive in Samad's. Denny rolled the side window down to call Samad over as he strolled across his lawn from his house.

“Hey there, Denny,” Samad said. The man was self-consciously grinning, as though he was trying to get a joke he couldn't unravel yet.

“You got Alzheimer's now?” André asked him.

“Says who?” Samad asked him back. “Why?”

“What was that about?” Denny inquired. He leaned forward and André leaned back so that they could both to talk to him through the open passenger-side window.

“Huh? What was what about what?”

“Samad, your wife, she knows about this? You told me she wasn't going to be home.”

“Don't be stupid. Her plans changed. We're going bowling, I told her.”

“Bowling? Where exactly? Never mind that I don't bowl, but where're we supposed to go bowling, Samad, where nobody will see us? We can't be noticed because we won't actually be bowling.”

The man shrugged, losing his grin, now worried about this inquisition. He glanced at the other two men, one inside the truck and the other back where his own vehicle stood parked, to see if they were understanding what he obviously did not. “In the city, I guess. What's so wrong with that?”

“In the city. Oh yeah? Joce must've asked you what bowling alley we're going to tonight—in the city.”

“I didn't tell her that. What's the problem?”

“You don't know? Next time, kiss her good-bye in the kitchen. Or let us know ahead of time that she's still home.”

“Fine! Bug off. Leave me alone. Anyway, what next time? There's not going to be a next time. Smart guy, what did you tell Val?”

“I'm doing extra maintenance on my rig.”

“Oh.” Samad seemed downcast. “That's good, Denny. That's a good one.”

“Yeah, well. I should've gone over it with you.”

This screwup, Denny decided, was not substantial enough to call off their gambit, although he wouldn't mind quitting on the spot and tossing their failure straight back in Samad's face. He stared out the window with his hands squeezing the steering wheel, then looked at Samad's worried sad-sack puss. The poor sod was clueless.

“Never mind,” Denny said. “Let's go bowling.”

■   ■   ■

In his squad car, Ryan
drove his date home across the old covered bridge. They were having a good time, culminating in a playful intimacy at the lovers' leap on the opposite side of the river from the town site. Tara stopped him before they got too heated, so Ryan's expectations for the evening were properly governed. He'd be permitted to kiss her good night and allowed to take his time, but the final motion of the evening would be to say good night at the door to Potpourri.

Once on Main Street, though, the store close by, he suggested a nightcap, hoping to extend the evening.

“You're inviting yourself up? No,” Tara said.

“Not what I meant. We could go to a bar.”

She hesitated, but consented, and they drove past the gift shop to a nearby pub. The owner, usually an amiable guy, greeted them at the door with his hands on hips while shaking his head.

“What?” Ryan asked him.

“Ryan, seriously,” he put to him, “do I need that thing parked outside my door?”

Both Ryan and Tara looked back, and saw the problem stirred up by a squad car parked outside a bar. Ryan was about to go back and move it when the owner chuckled and urged them inside. He was having them on. “Come on in. Enjoy yourselves. It's not like people are hanging off the rafters.”

They entered, and Tara took note that wherever Ryan went in this town people seemed to like him, and that seemed to have nothing to do with his profession.

■   ■   ■

The two Ford pickups departed
Samad's. Denny's led the way. He kept their speed down. He drove out of the keyhole residential development, out of the woods and onto the highway, then onto the narrow two-way into Wakefield proper. He stopped in the bumpy municipal parking lot on the edge of town and pulled into a spot on the gravel where he and André climbed out. He locked his truck using his key remote. They swung up onto the bed of Samad's truck and they both sat down and Denny tapped the side of the truck with his palm—Samad's cue to drive on. They headed back out the way they'd just come in and took the highway to skirt the edge of town, then they drove back in from the opposite side and in doing so approached the old covered bridge. By coming this way, they avoided driving through the centre of town. No one could say they'd been spotted there. Not one among them was a criminal or was ever an offender, but each understood what any crook instinctively believes, that no crime is worth committing unless it succeeds.

Denny wanted everything to run according to plan. More than anything else, he wanted to get away with this, but to do that he must expect the unexpected. He reminded himself to depend on the unknown as much as on any other factor.

Samad stopped near the bridge under a panoply of roadside trees.

Denny jumped down from the bed and Xavier skulked out from the cab looking miserable. He shot a glance at Denny, who nodded, then started walking uphill. The three men watched him go, climbing the grade to the bridge.

“Give him enough time,” Denny said.

They knew to do that. Xavier walked across the bridge to control access on that side, and to signal them if someone was coming or to keep intruders away for their own sakes once the action commenced.

They didn't want to get anybody killed, especially not that.

On the truck bed, André rolled the forty-five-gallon barrel of fuel from the front to the rear, then secured it again with straps. He unscrewed the small cap on the top of the drum and inserted a manual fuel pump that screwed into the same hole as the cap and was deep enough to reach the barrel's base.

“Prime it,” Denny instructed him.

André did so, and tipped the contents of a small bottle into the top of the pump. He revolved the lever until a little fluid spilled onto the ground. They could smell the gasoline now in the warm night air just as a breeze came up.

“You're an idiot, Samad,” André said. He'd been holding the thought in and only now did he speak it, an outburst that proved he was nervous, too.

“Why am I an idiot?” Samad protested.

“Don't ask,” Denny advised him. “You don't want to know.”

“I want to know, but. Why am I an idiot?”

“We don't have the whole night to answer that question.” Denny wanted to defuse any argument at this stage. He could kill André for bringing it up.

“Your wife knows who you're hanging out with tonight,” André said.

“Oh,” Samad said, as though he finally understood. Then he said, “So?” which proved he didn't.

“So tell her we decided not to go bowling,” Denny decreed. He'd been thinking about this. “André told his wife he was going out for a drink, not bowling. And not with anybody in particular.”

“Joce wouldn't let me drive if I told her that.”

André uttered a little laugh.

“What?” Samad asked.

“Tell her I'm doing maintenance so we called off the bowling, we just forgot to tell you. Then you guys talked me into having a drink and you don't even know where we ended up. Some bar in the city. Tell her that because it's the truth. André, tell Xavier our new story when you catch up to him.”

“Okay,” André said.

“Okay, Samad?” Denny asked. He changed his tone. He recognized the problem here, that Samad was accustomed only to being honest, and was not at all practised in telling lies. He was less suited than any of them to criminal activity and had no experience at being either unscrupulous or deceptive. “See, none of us told our wives we were going bowling. None of us told our wives we were going anywhere with anybody in particular. Because the four of us are not supposed to be together tonight. Understand? There was no plan. Get it? No plan to get together. And tell Joce if she asks, or if the cops ask, that you were our designated driver tonight so you didn't have a drink. You just drove us to a bar and back. Okay?”

Samad was pouting, but he seemed to understand. “Yeah, sure,” he said. Then he asked, “What cops? Your brother, you mean? Why would Ryan talk to us? He doesn't know anything.”

Denny disregarded the question. “I'm going up to check on X,” he said.

“Why would he talk to us?” Samad pressed on. “He won't, right?”

“Ryan might talk to anybody he can think of,” André said, picking up on Denny's pacifying approach. “It won't mean much. It's his job.”

Denny needed to be at a higher elevation to trace Xavier's progress. The bridge was 148 feet long, which took a while for a lumbering man to cross. Xavier was more than halfway over. He was not going slowly for him but not rushing either. Thankfully, no one else came along, and there were no vehicles. Late enough that the commerce of the town eased, yet early enough that the bars and restaurants weren't emptying out as yet. Denny pinched a mosquito just under his chin, then walked back under cover of the roadside woods to the truck.

He was thinking that if he were to do this over, he might not select Samad. He needed the fuel drum that he perpetually dragged around on the bed of his pickup, as if he was the kind of man who ventured off into the untamed woods beyond the boundaries of civilization to hunt or fish, either routinely or on a whim. Denny doubted that Samad hunted much and probably never fished, but he didn't doubt that Samad wanted people to believe that he did those things. Like everyone else, he was party to his personal insecurities. After he considered every angle, Denny knew that he couldn't ask any other person to carry a barrel of fuel on the bed of his truck, or do that himself, as it would be tantamount to a proclamation of guilt. He needed to rely on Samad, and now, as things turned out, on Samad's wife.

Walking back down the side of the road, he saw that he mistimed the moonrise, as an upper silver tip of the moon poked above a hilltop. Thin enough, therefore dim enough, to be of no particular consequence. Still, why did he mess that up? That should've been the easy part, accurately calculating the time of the moonrise. Now his confidence also waned.

He reached the others.

“Wait a minute or two—two, let's say. Xavier should be on the other side. Drive up to the edge of the bridge—”

“We know that,” André said.

“I'm repeating it,” Denny said, and he looked André in the eye and waited to see if he was about to give him any more lip. When André turned his gaze away and nodded, conceding, he said, “Watch for Xavier's signal. Don't you dare go across without it. You can't see what he sees over there. At that point, he's in charge, don't think otherwise. Samad, two things have to happen before you start across. You get Xavier's signal, and André says to go. Just one of those two is not good enough.”

“I got it,” Samad said. He was looking nervous. Perhaps the notion of two signals gave him hope that the whole operation might yet be called off. Denny supposed that everyone was secretly hoping for that, except, possibly, André.

They waited quietly then.

Denny wished that he still smoked although now was not the time even if he did. André still smoked, but not while he was hovering over an open drum containing forty-five gallons of gasoline.

Close to a minute went by when the headlights of a car appeared on their side of the bridge coming their way. Denny said, “Both of you get down, don't be seen,” and he himself went around to crouch behind the truck. By looking under the chassis, Denny saw the vehicle, a small car, turn off, leaving them in the clear and in the dark once more. Denny returned to the driver's side of the pickup.

“Go,” he said quietly, sternly.

Samad started the engine. André held on as the truck lurched forward.