Disappearances, page 11
VI
We lay under the fir tree on the edge of the cliff and watched the launch come around the tip of the point. Uncle Henry and Rat were both still asleep, though it was already the middle of the afternoon. We had spotted the launch from the ridge, going along through the notch on the west side of the lake. By the time we had raced down to the cliff it was coming back up our side, moving quite rapidly. The man standing beside the driver was sweeping a machine gun back and forth along the shoreline. Both men were dressed in blue, and both had long white hair.
Now we could see that neither of the two was Carcajou. But if Carcajou was the devil, these dead-faced white-haired mutants were the devil’s spawn, zombies devoid of all human or demon vitality including the vitality of madness. My father cocked back both hammers of the shotgun. They were within easy range now, but apparently he was going to let them pass by unless they noticed the canoe or got a glimpse of White Lightning.
Suddenly the one standing with the machine gun lifted his head and sniffed like a hunting dog. He slung the gun over his back, stepped onto the covered bow of the launch and leaped to the shore. Without breaking stride he started directly up the icy mountainside, running just inside a ragged line of stunted spruce trees where I would have said it was impossible for a mountain goat to go.
“Christ,” my father said, “the son of a bitch smelt us. Us or the whiskey.”
“Shoot him,” I said. “For God’s sake shoot him.”
“I want them both.”
My father dipped his head toward the water. The boat was out of range up the lake and just starting to turn back.
Through the little spruce trees I could see the blue movement of the man with the gun, ascending the escarpment in great vaulting bounds. Once on the edge of the cedar swamp behind our hill my father and I had watched a wild dog pursue a doe along a low ridge. We were bird hunting with shotguns and had to stand helplessly and hope the doe could escape. The dog, which must have weighed at least one hundred pounds, moved in a long primitive lupine gait, swinging its heavy dark head from side to side. More frightening than its size or speed or darkness was its silence. Steadily gaining on the deer, it made no sound at all. That is how the man with the machine gun came bounding up that cliff—in total silence.
He had only thirty or forty feet to go to reach the top. My father was on his feet, bringing the long heavy double barrel up into position and firing. The blue man collapsed in midleap. He hit the sheer face of the cliff, bounced once and plummeted toward the water. Weighted down by the machine gun, he sank like a stone.
As quickly as he had shot the second hijacker on the covered bridge more than thirty-five years ago my father swung around and fired down on the boat, which was heading back our way. Splinters flew up from the stern. It turned sharply and headed out into the lake.
By the time my father had reloaded, the launch was out of range again. As it sped away the driver looked back over his shoulder like the snow owl on our barn. Uncle Henry was standing beside us, watching the retreating boat. His face was expressionless.
“That boat ain’t going to make it, boys,” my father said. “I put a hole as big as your fist through the bottom back near the engine. She won’t get halfway over before she goes down.”
He was right, the boat was already foundering. It took another minute to sink but before it did the owl-man was out of it and swimming fast toward the opposite cliffs.
“What I wouldn’t give for my deer rifle,” Uncle Henry said.
“You don’t need it, Hen. That water’s ice cold. There’s still ice floating around in it. That albiner ain’t no polar bear. Likely he won’t make it.”
Uncle Henry looked out across the lake at the white speck that was the man’s head. His face showed no emotion at all. “Likely he will,” he said.
Uncle Henry said he was going for a short walk in the woods. My father and I remained on the edge of the cliff, watching the swimmer out of sight. There was no way to tell whether he had made the crossing safely, but I was inclined to agree with Uncle Henry; that was how our luck had been running.
There was a breeze now. A few scattered riffles began to appear on the water. My father put his arm around me. “She’s starting to come up,” he said happily. “We might just have an old-fashioned sleigh ride out there tonight, Wild Bill. Ratty won’t much like that, will he?”
I shook my head, but I wasn’t thinking about Rat. I was thinking again about my father’s past. “Dad, what about your people? Grampa and Gramma Goodman and your brothers and sisters. Did you ever find them?”
My father squeezed my shoulder hard. “I stopped looking, Bill. When I found Sweet Evangeline and Wild Bill, I stopped looking.”
He reached up and ruffled the hair on the back of my head. “I’m going to get the coffee on. It’s time to sober Rat up. It’ll be dark in two hours. It’ll be time to start out on Lake Memphremagog, Wild Bill. We’re going to have a sleigh ride all right. See them dark clouds a-coming.”
For a few minutes I stayed there, watching the lake rise. Out in the middle small whitecaps were beginning to show up here and there. I knew my father was right. It was going to be a rough trip back, and not just for Rat. Now the bay between the cliff and the point was growing choppy. Far under that dark crawling surface a dead warlock twisted and bobbed, pulling against the drag of his machine gun, his long hair waving like seaweed. I shuddered.
I sensed that my father had not told me everything he knew about our family. There were black holes in our history, dense with mystery, maybe ultimately impenetrable: René Bonhomme’s fate; Calvin’s fate, and William Shakespeare’s; my own grandfather’s disappearance along with his entire family except my father. At the time I did not know what to think, but I believe now that in that troubled spring of 1932 my father needed to come to terms with the collective past of our family, including his own secret past, by transmitting it to me so that we could confront it together. This, I think, was his main purpose in making the whiskey-running trip and taking me along.
My father’s spirits seemed to be rising with the wind, but Rat woke up bilious as an old buck goat.
“Have some fresh-caught rainbow trout, Ratty. Ain’t this fish savory and sweet, though, boys?”
“It’s tasty,” Uncle Henry admitted. He seemed to feel better himself now that he had gotten some sleep and had his walk in the woods, though I noticed him look with an interrogatory expression at White Lightning once or twice, as if maybe he still wasn’t completely sure that it was his car.
“I don’t want no trout,” Rat said. “I don’t eat nothing that don’t walk on four legs like a man. I’ve got the headache from all that touring around. I wish I had a sup of something.”
“You’ll have all the sups you ever dreamed of as soon as we get that whiskey safely down the lake, Rat. For now have a sup of coffee or you’ll be walking on all four legs yourself.”
My father handed Rat a boiling hot cup of coffee. Rat looked at it as though it might be strychnine and then gulped it down.
“Didn’t that taste good, now? What goes better outside in the woods than a hot cup of coffee, Mr. Muskrat Kinneson?”
Rat was looking steadily at the stack of whiskey cases near White Lightning. “A sup of something,” he said.
“Rat, if you help us load the canoe and unload later and don’t beshit yourself in between whilst we’re rolling around in them great cresting breakers, I’ll give you an entire full case. How’s that now?”
“I ruther have a sup now and be sure of getting it. Great cresting breakers, is it? I ain’t setting foot in that canoe, Quebec Bill. I wouldn’t trust myself to a canoe on a millpond, and certainly not in no great cresting breakers.”
“You’ll just have to walk home in the dark, then, my boy. Maybe that kindly old gentleman with the white hair will happen along and give you a lift.”
“The canoe might be all right if I had a sup just before I got in.”
“One sup, Rat. That’s fair enough. Now how about a bite of mountain trout fried to a golden turn?”
“I like it better baked,” Rat said as he helped himself to a large chunk of fish. “Fried foods give me gas.”
“Hear the wind in that fir tree,” Uncle Henry said. “It’s going to be a rough night on that lake, Bill. Best we be heading out now if we’re going at all. She’ll be dark by the time we lug this whiskey down to the canoe.”
“We ain’t going to lug this whiskey nowhere,” my father said.
“How’s that, Bill?”
“What do you think I brung along that rope for? I’m going to lower them cases down to you. Wild Bill, you take Henry and Rat down to the canoe and paddle up to that little strip of gravel directly below us. Stack the cases so the weight is evened out. Leave room for Henry in the stern and me in the bow and yourself and Rat in between. Go very easy with the cases. If you drop one it’ll smash clean through the bottom of the canoe. Take the gun and pack basket down with you.”
Uncle Henry walked up to White Lightning. “I reckon we ought to remove the plates,” he said. “Just in case anybody blunders down here before I get back.”
My father came over and reached down and wrenched the back plate right out of the standard, screws and all. He went around in front and repeated the process and flung the twisted plates out over the cliff. The wind caught one and it sailed back and landed on a projecting ledge.
“I’ll be back,” Uncle Henry said to White Lightning. “Don’t never doubt it. It may be one day, it may be two or three, but I’ll be back.” He put out his hand to pat the crumpled fender and cut it quite severely on a sharp ridge of torn metal. As the blood dripped onto the ground he looked in turn at his hand, the car and my father.
“What happened, Hen, did you scratch yourself? Well, when them LaChance boys see you come home without your car and hear what happened to her they won’t never think to question what become of the whiskey. That’s all clear profit, boys.”
“I think,” Uncle Henry said, his hand bleeding steadily, “that you had better bandage this up. If you intend for me to do any paddling, that is. And I think that if I run into the LaChance boys the LaChance boys had better worry about what is going to become of them. Because it will not be their jaws I will break. It will be their necks.”
“About that sup,” Rat said, repairing to the whiskey cases.
I got the shotgun and pack basket while my father tied his red handkerchief around Uncle Henry’s injured hand and Rat had his sup. Then I led the way out around the cliff and down the slope to the canoe. Rat scrabbled along behind on his rear end, holding his bottle high over his head. When we got to the bottom, he refused to ride over to the cliff in the canoe.
“He’s going to get hot again,” I said to Uncle Henry as we paddled across the bay. “He won’t be any good to us at all.”
“That’s so, Bill, but then he’s less apt to be in the way if he’s hot. Leave him go ahead and have his sup. See him stumble along over them rocks. Graceful cuss, ain’t he?”
“Why did he decide to come? I wish he hadn’t come.”
“He said he’s always wanted to see foreign lands. Maybe I shouldn’t have brung him, Bill. If I’d knowned half of what was in store for us I wouldn’t have. But then if I’d knowed half of what was in store I wouldn’t have come myself.”
“Uncle Henry, I’m sorry about White Lightning. Dad is too. I know he’ll help you fix her up.”
“Billy,” Uncle Henry said, “you don’t ever have to make excuses for your father. But that is one thing he won’t do. I’ll take care of White Lightning myself.”
When we got to the base of the cliff I got out in about a foot of water and held the canoe for Uncle Henry. I remained standing in the lake to steady the canoe. The water was still only a degree or two above freezing. I didn’t see how anyone could survive such cold for long.
High above us my father stood on the edge of the cliff paying out rope. In a loose hammock fashioned from one end were four cases of whiskey, which he began to swing like a pendulum to clear the projecting shelf about twenty feet below him. Gradually he increased the arc, a maneuver that required all his extraordinary strength and balance. When the cases were clearing the edge of the shelf he let several feet of rope slide through his hands. I was surprised the rope held. It was no bigger around than a clothesline, but a few moments later Uncle Henry was easing the cases down onto the gravel.
While my father retrieved the rope and secured the second load Uncle Henry carried the cases across the thin strip of shore to the canoe. Two cases fit neatly side by side in the bottom with room for two more to be stacked on top of them.
“Lake cold enough for you?”
I nodded. Before the next load reached the bottom I was shivering all over. My feet were beginning to get numb, but I couldn’t come ashore. Here directly under the cliff the bay was quite exposed to the big south wind coming up the lake. Despite my efforts the canoe rocked like a cradle. Further out the lake was running in long swells. The evening sky over the western mountains was an ugly dark blue, the color of the outlaws’ uniforms. I was shivering harder. We were in for it, I thought. We were really in for it.
The second load banged against the edge of the rock shelf. The next cleared the edge with a foot to spare but glanced sharply off the cliff below. My father was almost yanked off his feet, and I heard the sound of glass breaking.
“Send down two cases instead of four,” Uncle Henry called up. “We ain’t in that much hurry.”
Rat was picking his way along over the talus like some ancient aquatic denizen coming ashore for the first time and not much liking it. He looked up at the descending whiskey and quickly sat down and covered his eyes. Then he uncovered them and looked straight up at my father. “Quebec Bill,” he shouted, “you be careful of my case. Don’t you bang my case like that.”
Six cases were now descending from the top of the cliff, and now lodging, as anyone but my father would know they would, on the shelf. With the sudden release of pressure he staggered back out of view, jerking one corner of the rope sling off the cases. A case tottered on the edge of the shelf.
“Look out,” I yelled.
Uncle Henry flattened himself against the base of the cliff. The falling case smashed to bits on the rocks at his feet. His face remained quite calm as he wiped the whiskey off it.
“I hope that warn’t mine,” Rat called up.
“No, Rat,” my father said. “Yours is hung up on the ledge. Just climb up like that albiner fella did and tie the rope back on again if you will.”
Rat looked up at the smooth beetling granite. In spots below the ledge exfoliation had actually cut the cliff back toward its base at an obtuse angle. “What albiner?” he said.
“Leave them go,” Uncle Henry called up to my father, who had tied the free end of the rope around the fir tree and was unraveling the slack down onto the shelf beside the stranded whiskey.
“Leave them go, for Christ’s sake,” Uncle Henry shouted.
Paying no attention to us, my father hopped down the face of the cliff on the taut rope. He knelt on the ledge and readjusted the sling. Then he stood up and lowered the remaining five cases to the bottom. He walked back up the cliff on the rope and successfully lowered the last seven cases—all at once.
“Are you going to climb down the rope?” I called up hopefully.
“No, we may need it.” He snapped his wrist and the rope came down in a long undulating wave and coiled up like a snake at the foot of the cliff.
“Paddle back to where you put in,” my father said. “I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
Uncle Henry got into the stern. “Come on, Rat,” I said.
Rat sat on a rock back near the base of the cliff, working on his bottle. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’ve got the lumbago too bad to risk it. My whole spine is numb.”
“Both my feet are numb,” I shouted. “Get in this canoe.”
“Have another sup and get in,” Uncle Henry said.
Rat had another sup. “I still can’t do it,” he said philosophically. “Seasickness runs in the family. You don’t know how deathly sick us Kinnesons get when we leave dry land.”
“Fine,” Uncle Henry said. “You can stay behind on dry land and greet General Grant for us. Something tells me he’ll be along sooner or later. Get in, Billy.”
“I believe it’ll be sooner,” my father called down. “Get in that canoe like the devil was after you, Rat Kinneson. Because I think he is. Quick now, boys. Beat for the point. There’s a vehicle coming down the tote road.”
Rat nearly swamped us in his haste to get into the canoe. I thought my father was playing a trick to get Rat in gear, but he shouted again for us to head for the point as quickly as we could.
“What are you going to do?” I yelled.
“Join you directly. Paddle now. Paddle, boys.”
Uncle Henry and I began to paddle fast. The canoe was stable, but we were moving directly into the waves angling in off the lake. I looked back over my shoulder and saw my father’s red hunting jacket moving through the dark branches of the fir. “Paddle like hell,” he shouted. “It’s that cannon truck and it’s backing up.”
A moment later we heard fiendish bellowing followed closely by a cannon blast and the clangorous rending of metal. White Lightning plunged over the edge of the cliff. It bounced off its nose on the rock shelf, exploded and fell flaming like a meteor into the lake.
“No,” Uncle Henry said.
“Did you see that, boys?” my father shouted from the fir tree.
I didn’t dare look at Uncle Henry’s face, but Rat’s was uplifted and had assumed a beatific mien.
“Zacchaeus,” a voice rumbled, “come down out of that tree.”
The top of the fir tree was shaking. It began to sway in long rhythmic dips. My father’s body came catapulting out of the spire in a compact tumbler’s ball just before the next blast. Halfway up its trunk the fir split in two. The upper half dropped onto the ledge. Meanwhile my father shot through the air a hundred and fifty feet above the lake.
