Disappearances, page 8
The Packard was going at a furious clip and getting well out ahead of us. We were doing better than fifty ourselves, but the dirt road at the bottom of the lane looked forever and a day away. Behind us someone was shooting again. I could hear the bullets ripping into the whiskey cases on the luggage carrier and in the back seat. Uncle Henry pushed my head down. Trying not to get cut on the shards of glass, I held tight to Rat’s legs to keep him from jouncing out through the gaping opening where the windshield had been.
There was a tremendous explosion. I thought the whiskey in the burning stable must have gone up all at once. I lifted my head just in time to see the Packard turning end over end through the field beside the lane. At the same time it was coming apart. Wheels and doors, cases of whiskey and fenders flew in every direction, as though bailing out of their own volition. What was left of the car finally flopped into a marshy spot and remained sticking up in the air at about an eighty-degree angle. All that remained intact were the chassis and steering wheel, to which my father still clung, waving to us like a triumphant aviator. We swerved out around the crater in the lane where the land mine had gone off and stopped.
“Stay here,” Uncle Henry said. As he got out I heard him say, “I told him I didn’t like no guards.”
I jumped out of the car anyway and ran after Uncle Henry down through the marsh. My father stood near the skeletal remains of the Packard. “Look at this, boys,” he called. “Not a hubcap left on her.”
“Oh, Christ,” Uncle Henry said, pointing up at the barn. Flames were jumping out through the roof. A man ran up the highdrive and opened the sliding door of the hayloft. Two others emerged from the milk house with whiskey cases. The man we had struck with White Lightning lay unattended in the dooryard.
A large truck rolled backwards down the highdrive from the loft. We began to run back toward White Lightning, which at the same time started off down the lane. Rat was driving off without us. We shouted for him to stop, pounding on the windows as we ran alongside the accelerating Cadillac. Instead of slowing down Rat panicked and drove off the road into the marsh. The hood came unhinged and popped up. Rat got the front wheels back onto the lane, but the rear wheels remained out of sight.
“Oh, Christ,” Uncle Henry said again, and if he wasn’t exactly praying he wasn’t swearing this time either.
There was another explosion. A wicked whizzing whine passed over our heads. Carcajou made his baying insane noise from the dooryard. “LaChances,” he bellowed. “Surrender, LaChances.”
He was standing in his blue uniform and cap next to the open maw of the truck, from which a long black smoking barrel projected. He lifted his arm and brought it down. “Fire,” he roared.
Uncle Henry and my father threw me to the ground. There was that terrible whining noise again, then a metallic shriek. When I looked back in the field I saw that the Packard had been cut completely in two. We jumped up and ran toward the Cadillac.
“Steer, Bill,” my father shouted.
I got in behind the wheel and pushed Rat over out of the way. He had gotten a whisk broom out of the glove compartment and was busily sweeping broken glass off the seat and singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Over the crazy whinnying laughter from the dooryard the cannon exploded again. The raised hood vanished.
Meanwhile Uncle Henry and my father had their backs up against the whiskey cases tied on the luggage carrier. “Give it to her,” my father called. I stepped hard on the gas, and the back wheels spun and dug deeper into the muck. I thought we were going to have to head for the woods to be run down one by one like the unfortunate LaChances, whose name Carcajou continued to bellow between cannonadings.
“Let up,” my father shouted to me. “Lift up on your end, Hen. Heave her right on out.”
My father and Uncle Henry were probably the two strongest men in Kingdom County, but I was still amazed to look back and see them raise the rear end of that huge overloaded Cadillac entirely out of the mud and over onto the lane. Then Uncle Henry was behind the wheel and my father was sitting on Rat’s lap. Rat was singing about a voice calling on his ear; his eyes were shut and his whisk broom was going vigorously over the dash, my father, and me, wedged in the middle looking down through where the windshield had been and into the exposed workings of the engine.
“See all them little rods dance,” my father said, leaning forward to get a better look. “That’s power, Henry. You’ve got a fine car here.”
“Yes,” Uncle Henry said. “And well broke in, too.”
As we skidded onto the dirt road at the foot of the lane we took a shot broadside. It plowed through the right rear window, the six top cases of whiskey on the back seat and on out through the roof, hurling us sideways across the road, and up on two wheels. Somehow Uncle Henry kept us from turning over and got us back under control again. If all his experience outrunning G-men at high speeds over bad roads ever paid off, it was that early morning in 1932, south of Magog.
At last we were between woods on both sides of the road, and out of range of Carcajou’s salvos. Both Rat and my father were in states of exultation, though for very different reasons. Rat appeared to be having an experience of grace, probably induced by shock. He was trembling all over and shouting phrases from a tongue that had not been heard or spoken since the construction of the Tower of Babel. At the same time he was furiously whisking my father, who bounced up and down on his bony quivering knees like a ventriloquist’s dummy in the throes of a severe seizure.
“What did I say, boys? Did Quebec Bill say you’d be in for some surprises or not? Did you see them running around up there? See the flames, boys. Look back over the trees, Hen. See the smoke.”
Uncle Henry had little leisure for observing barn fires. The impact of the broadside had twisted the body of the car around at approximately a forty-five-degree angle to the frame so that as we sped down the road we seemed perpetually to be veering off into the opposite lane.
The car reeked of whiskey. Rat interrupted his ecstasy long enough to get an unbroken bottle out of one of the damaged cases behind us. He broke the seal, unscrewed the cap and chugged down a third of the contents. Then he looked at my father with just the whites of his eyes showing and shouted, “Abba babba babba. Quinquist, quinquist. Boola boola, Calvin Coola.”
Uncle Henry was sweating hard and wrestling hard with the wheel. Evidently the rear axle had been bent when Rat drove off the lane. We progressed the way a snake that has been run over drags its paralyzed rear quarters behind it.
“There’s where we turned off last night to take that shortcut over the ridge,” my father said.
“I know,” Uncle Henry said. “It warn’t that difficult to follow your trail.”
“Wait until Evangeline hears about this,” my father said.
“Yes,” Uncle Henry said. “Wait until she does.”
“Your car’s broke in a little more,” my father hazarded.
Uncle Henry did not reply.
As we approached the church on the outskirts of Magog we met our first car of the morning, a black sedan full of nuns. We must have appeared to be coming directly toward them because they pulled far over on their side of the road, then swerved off onto the church lawn into the damaged crèche. Shepherds and wise men, kine and asses were scattered in every direction. The members of the holy family were maimed nearly beyond recognition. A crude wooden image of Mary, which resembled a heavy-limbed cretin more than the virgin mother, flew out of the manger and landed in a salacious position on top of the radiator cap of the sedan. As we pulled away from this scene of desecration Rat reared up through the windshield shaking my father off his lap onto me. He brandished his whiskey bottle and shouted back at the nuns, “‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’ Exodus twenty: four.”
There was not much traffic on the long street between the taverns and the paper mill. By the time we reached the other end there was even less. Two cars and a horse-drawn milk wagon had run up onto the wooden sidewalk. A third car took refuge down a side street.
“How far is it to that log trace?” Uncle Henry said between clenched teeth.
“Not far,” my father said.
Uncle Henry peered over the wheel at the smoking engine. “That’s too far,” he said.
He was right. Just as we turned off the gravel road onto the trace leading down to the lake we threw a rod. We had to keep going, though; now the lake was our only way out. Clattering, knocking, smoking like a chimney fire, smelling like a bombed distillery, White Lightning ran out her last five miles like the noble creation she was.
“Take her right up under the big fir, Hen,” my father said.
Uncle Henry did, and I have never been sure whether he shut off the key when we got there or White Lightning just died. As we sat looking out over the lake in the heavy silence that often follows the conclusion of long or difficult trips, I didn’t dare ask.
Rat, who by this time had finished his bottle, opened his eyes and looked at the burned-out engine. “How are Henry and me going to get back home?” he said.
“By canoe, the same as I and Wild Bill,” my father said.
Rat shut his eyes and did not open them again until late afternoon.
My father and Uncle Henry and I got out and looked at White Lightning, which was no longer white, or any other recognizable color. The hood was gone, the windshield was gone, the springs and engine were shot, the back seat and rug were soaked with whiskey. “She looks like she was struck by lightning all right,” my father said.
Uncle Henry was examining the gaping holes where the cannonball had bashed in the rear door windows and curled up part of the roof like a piece of bent tin. “See there, Wild Bill,” my father cried, “I’ve doubled him over laughing.”
“I don’t think Uncle Henry is laughing,” I said.
My father ran over and looked up into Uncle Henry’s face.
“He’s laughing inside, Bill. You don’t know how Henry laughs inside.”
Uncle Henry looked at my father. “What time do you figure on setting out again?”
“At dusk, Hen.”
Uncle Henry nodded. “Well, boys, if you don’t have any objections I reckon I’ll lay down and sleep for a while. And maybe when I wake up this will all be a dream and I’ll be back in the hotel. Maybe White Lightning will be down in the lot behind the hotel as shiny as ever. But I doubt it.”
“Henry,” my father said, “you are the best brother a man ever had. Do you know what I’m going to do for you? I’m going to get you a brand new Cadillac. See the haze on the lake this morning. It’s going to rain. We may not have to buy any hay at all. A ton or two at the most will carry us through. The rest of the money belongs to you, Hen. We’ve still got twenty-five full cases. That’s at least two thousand dollars profit after buying hay if we need to. That’s a new Cadillac, Henry. That’s Quebec Bill’s gift to Henry Coville.”
“Bill,” Uncle Henry said, “that used to be a nine-thousand-dollar automobile. I ain’t going to tell you how many runs in my old Ford I had to make to buy it. I ain’t trying to lay the blame on you neither. I was the one that come to see you about this run, not the other way around. But I want you to understand one thing. You don’t always listen too good but you listen to this. I don’t want another Cadillac. I want White Lightning. And if it takes four thousand dollars or eight thousand dollars or twelve thousand dollars, I aim to put her back on the road again. Somehow. As good as ever. Do you understand that?” Without waiting for a reply he lay down close beside White Lightning with his head on his arm and shut his eyes.
My father was so moved he was speechless—briefly. He ran back to the cabin and got our blanket out of the pack basket and covered up Uncle Henry. “We’ll do it, too, Hen,” he said. “You and Bill and me. We’ll do it.”
“No,” Uncle Henry said without opening his eyes, “we won’t. I will.”
It was only about nine o’clock, though so much had happened since dawn that it seemed much later. While my father built a fire and shaved with his hunting knife I unloaded the whiskey. There were twenty-five full cases left, including three cases of loose bottles. I asked whether I should start carrying them down to the canoe.
“No, Bill, we’ll tend to that later. I feel like a swim now. Quebec Bill and Wild Bill are going swimming.”
Fifteen minutes later we were diving into the lake, out of which I immediately jumped again. But the cold didn’t bother my father. He was a superb swimmer, as agile and quick in the water as an otter. He dived and frolicked in the icy lake like a laughing white-headed seal. Once he stayed under for the better part of a minute. When he came up he was holding a rainbow trout nearly as long as his arm.
Rat and Henry continued to sleep while we cooked the trout. After breakfast we left the last of our bread and some fish for them, which my father assured me Rat could get his friend to multiply, and went for a walk back through the woods.
The sun was shining through the haze, and it was warm enough to leave our hunting jackets by the pack basket inside the cabin. Behind the cabin the beeches were beginning to put out fuzzy green buds. Further back in the hardwoods spring beauties and trillium were up. A few trout lilies were in blossom, bright yellow against the brown leaves on the floor of the woods. Off in the mountains a male partridge began to drum. A snowshoe rabbit, still mostly white, bounded out of a brush pile. “He don’t know it’s spring, Bill,” my father said. “If he don’t change clothes pretty soon he’s going to make a tasty dinner for some smart red fox.”
After a long climb we came out into a clearing full of blueberry bushes. From here the view was spectacular. Everywhere we looked there were lakes, rivers, forests and small farms. Far down the lake I could just distinguish the yellow tug, still well south of the notch. Back in the hills across the lake smoke was still rising from Carcajou’s barn. Beyond that the Laurentian Mountains lay scattered under the hazy blue sky.
My father put his arm around me. With his other hand he pointed off across the mountains. “Wild Bill,” he shouted as loudly as his broken jaw would permit, “ain’t that a Christly wonderful sight to see?”
In the middle of the field sat a giant boulder. It was not an outcropping but a glacial erratic picked up by the ice sheet in northern Canada and later dropped here on the ridge. My father walked over to this house-sized anomaly and sat down on a patch of moss under the side facing the lake. As I sat down next to him he got out his pipe and began to fill it.
Looking down the lake through the notch, I thought again of René St. Laurent Bonhomme, who had disappeared near here seventy years before. I wondered why my father had chosen the previous evening to tell me about René’s disappearance. I had also been surprised to hear him refer to his father, whose life, like my father’s own past before his marriage, had always been one of those taboo subjects my family refused to discuss. Even Cordelia, that most irreverent of all iconoclasts, never mentioned my Grandfather Goodman.
Now it occurred to me that my father might actually want to tell me something about those times in his own life he had never to my knowledge discussed with anyone. Even if he didn’t, I might be able to get him to; a taboo, I suddenly realized, was at the least a two-way agreement, a contract that one person alone could not enforce.
“Dad,” I said quickly so that I wouldn’t have time to change my mind, “tell me what happened to Grampa Goodman after he ran away.”
“Wild Bill wants to hear about his grandfather,” my father said to his ever-present gallery. Then in his lilting narrative voice he began to talk about his father and that three-quarters of his own life that he had not mentioned half a dozen times to me since I could remember.
V
Soon after running away from Cordelia in 1869 my Grandfather William Goodman apprenticed himself to a gunsmith. He was talented at the work, but after two or three years he left with the eight-gauge shotgun that he had made himself and went to work for a professional smuggler. One night my grandfather and the smuggler drank more than usual. They began to argue, my father didn’t know what over, and the gun went off. After that my grandfather ran the business himself.
He specialized in transporting whiskey across the Canadian line, and covered up his clandestine operations by ostensibly dealing in timber lots. During the spring and early summer he traveled through southern Quebec and New Brunswick and northern New England, cruising played-out border farmland for marketable stands of timber, on which he then leased stumpage rights for the following winter. He would locate two or three wood lots, not too large, within an hour’s traveling distance of one another and the border and always near or in a dry county or township. Later in the summer he would move his wife and ten children, of whom my father was the eldest, to a centrally located farmhouse, invariably run down and invariably a long way from any settlement. Then he would begin cutting.
From the time he was six until he was sixteen and left home for the first and last time my father worked in the woods with my grandfather. For the first year or so he piled brush. Then he learned to use a small bucksaw to cut the upper limbs and tops of down trees into kindling. By the time he was ten he was driving my grandfather’s team of big woods horses, hauling tree-length logs out to roadside landing yards during the day and by night driving those same horses back and forth across remote unwatched border crossings in front of a wagon or sleigh loaded with whiskey. My grandfather would make one run with him to show him the route. After that my father went alone, often driving twenty-five or thirty miles over roads that were little more than log traces through heavy forests, sometimes in temperatures of thirty and forty below zero. He told me he first began drinking in order to keep warm on those night runs.
