Yeah, because he was scared to death. He had to.
One thing for sure, if Richie had never shot anybody he was anxious to try it. See what it was like to use a gun.
Armand thinking, Yes, you could help him out there. Show him where to point it. This guy had to be good for something.
The ten stitches in his chin didn’t keep Richie from talking. Only now he barely opened his mouth when he spoke and was hard to understand. Armand was getting tired of saying “What?” every time Richie asked him something. Now he wanted to know where they were going. Wasn’t that the guy Lionel’s house they went by?
“That’s right,” Armand said, “and his wife was there. We got enough people already have seen this car.”
“I told you, take it to Detroit and let it get stolen,” Richie said. “Now where we going?”
They were crossing a short span of bridge over one of the many channels in these flats. “Now we’re on Squirrel Island,” Armand said. “It’s like part of Walpole. I want to see if it’s a good place.”
“I think down in the marsh is better,” Richie said.
He was probably right. Armand, letting the Cadillac coast to a stop in the dirt road, remembered this island green with corn in the summer. Now it was all dead, rows of withered stalks as far as you could see, reaching way over to that freighter in the ship channel. It got Richie excited.
“Look at that. Like it’s going through the cornfield. Over at Henry’s you see them, it’s like they’re in the woods. Now where we going?”
“Back,” Armand said.
Back across Walpole, following roads through deep woods to the other side, to Lionel’s house on the Snye River. Richie saying, “Now let me get this straight. This guy’s Indian, but used to be an ironworker. Same as the guy you’re trying to tell me isn’t the real estate man.”
“Believe me,” Armand said.
“Well, what was he doing there?”
“I don’t care,” Armand said, “long as you know what we have to do. There’s the house. Good, his wife’s gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s right there—you see him? And the truck’s gone that was there.”
“That’s him, huh? Not a bad-looking house—I mean for an Indian. Shit. What’s he doing?”
It was a little white-frame place set among willows: a window, a door, a window. A bike in the yard. Lionel was on the front stoop, taking the screen out of the aluminum door and putting in the storm pane for winter. Armand didn’t see anyone else around. Lionel had a couple of grown kids, gone, and one that was a baby when Armand was here last. He turned into the worn tire tracks that extended past the house to a shed where Lionel kept his muskrat traps and decoys, fishnets hanging from the roof. Lionel was looking this way now. Hands on his hips, not very anxious to see company. Beyond the house was the wooden dock on the river, where Lionel’s outboard was tied. Lionel was coming across the yard now, swinging his leg.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Get him to tell you.”
“He looks more Indian than you, Bird.”
They got out of the car. Armand said, “Lionel, this guy wants to do some duck hunting.” He didn’t bother to introduce them. Lionel had stopped, hands beneath his folded arms in a sweat shirt, not ready to shake hands anyway. Not too happy to see them.
Though he said, “Wants to knock down some ducks, ‘ey?”
Armand said, “You see this guy’s chin? He was putting up his storm windows and fell off the ladder, cut himself up so he can’t work. I said, ‘Well, let’s go duck hunting.’ How does it look? You free tomorrow?”
Lionel acted as if he had to think about it. “I don’t know, maybe. I can go out later, see if it’s gonna be any good, any ducks landing.”
“Where, down the marsh?”
Lionel turned, looking off at layers of clouds with dark undersides. “I go down by St. Anne’s, see how it is. Maybe, I don’t know.”
“We could go now,” Armand said, “take a ride in your boat. Richie hasn’t ever seen a marsh.”
“I’ve seen one. Shit, I’ve even seen this one.” Armand gave him a look, staring hard, and Richie said, “But I’ve never been like in one. In a boat.”
“You guys,” Lionel said, smiling a little, “you want to go like that?”
Armand buttoned his suit coat and held his hands out. “What’s the matter? I always wear this when I go duck hunting. How about him?” Armand hooked a thumb at Richie, blood all over his sport coat. “Couple of dudes, ‘ey?” He moved toward Lionel saying, “Come on, let’s go,” extending his hand to touch Lionel’s arm. Lionel turned away, swinging his leg out to walk off. Following him around back and along a path to the river, Armand said, “Tell this guy—Lionel? Tell him how you fell and hurt yourself.”
“That’s what happened,” Lionel said.
“Tell him how high up you were.”
“Seventy feet.”
Richie, following Armand, said, “Shit, and it didn’t kill him?”
“Tell him what you landed on. What do you call those things? They stick out of concrete.”
“Retaining rods,” Lionel said.
“Retaining rods,” Armand said over his shoulder, “they put in concrete. He landed on one of those things, sticking straight up.”
“Jesus Christ,” Richie said.
“Like he sat down in it.”
“Jesus Christ—it went up his ass?”
“It hit him under his butt,” Armand said over his shoulder as they came to the boat dock: a plank walk that extended out into the river, Lionel’s aluminum boat with its forty-horse Johnson tied alongside.
Lionel turned to them, saying, “The rod went through me and came out my back here, at my kidney. Where it used to be.”
“Jesus Christ,” Richie said.
“He only has one kidney,” Armand said.
“I lost the kidney, I broke both my feet and my legs and had to get a new plastic kneecap, this one,” Lionel said. “But I was lucky, ’cause if I didn’t land on that retaining rod I’d be dead. It slowed me down.” He moved toward the boat saying, “What else you want to know?” and began to free the line.
Armand said, “Ten, twelve years ago, ‘ey?”
“More than that. It was when we were building the Renaissance Center, over in Detroit. More like fourteen years now.” He was holding the boat for them, offering a hand. Armand, stepping aboard, gripped Lionel’s hand. Richie ignored it.
“You were talking to a guy yesterday,” Armand said, “I notice was an ironworker.”
“Yeah, he was on that job too,” Lionel said. “I think it was the first time I met him. He was a punk then.”
“But not now, ‘ey?”
“A punk,” Lionel said, coiling the line, “is what ironworkers call an apprentice. No, believe me, he’s no punk now.”
“What’s his name?”
Armand waited. Lionel was looking toward the house and was thinking about something or maybe didn’t hear him.
“I should have left my wife a note,” Lionel said. “She drove our girl to go ice-skating, over the sports arena.”
Armand looked toward the house, then up at Lionel on the dock. “This won’t take long.”
A lake freighter appeared, a small one but towering over them as it passed, Lionel saying it was going up to Hazzard Grain in Wallaceburg, Lionel now telling them things without being asked.
At first it was like any river with land on both sides, tree lines and thickets Lionel called “the bush.” But as they moved south the banks of the Snye changed to marshland, reeds and cattails as far as Armand could see from low in the boat. Now it was like a river that ran through weeds growing out of the water. He said, “Where’s the land? There’s no place you can get out.”
Lionel seemed to smile. He was not so serious now guiding his boat, the forty-horse Johnson grumbling in the water. Pointing then to an opening in the marsh bank he said, “That swale there—when
the water’s up you punch your boat through there, find some muskrat.”
Richie, in the bow, said, “Where? I don’t see any muskrats.”
“They seen you first,” Lionel said. “I had a trap I’d stick it in there. That’s where they crawl up.”
“You eat ’em?”
“If you want,” Lionel said. “You can barbecue muskrat, the way I like it, or make a stew. See, but they’re bottom feeders so a lot of people won’t eat them, afraid they gonna get some toxic-waste dressing in their meat.”
Richie said, then what good were they? Lionel told him a nice pelt was worth six-fifty and Richie said, shit, was that all?
“Watch the sky,” Lionel said. “You want ducks, we have to see where they land.”
“My jaw hurts,” Richie said, “and I’m cold.”
It made Armand think of summer, being here a long time ago when it was hot. “It looks different—all this water.”
“Maybe you never came down this far,” Lionel said, “you and your brothers. There aren’t no cats or dogs here to shoot.”
“Keep talking like that,” Armand said, “I’ll turn you into a muskrat.” He looked over his shoulder at Lionel in the stern. “I learned how to work medicine from my grandmother. She was gonna turn me into an owl one time.”
“Too bad she didn’t,” Lionel said.
Armand had to twist around to look at him again. “What do you mean by that?”
“An owl knows things gonna happen.” Lionel smiled then a little and said, “You gonna turn me into one of these rats, wait till spring when they come in heat. I’ll have some fun.”
“That’s what you already are now,” Armand said, “live in a place like this.” He was cold and wanted this trip to hurry up and be over. Turning around on the seat, so the wind hit his back, didn’t help much. All Lionel had on was the sweatshirt, but didn’t appear cold. He wore jeans and dirty sneakers—no, they were running shoes. Look at him. He liked it here and there was no way to insult him. Armand watched Lionel’s eyes raise to read the clouds or the wind or some goddamn Indian thing he did.
“How much to take us out tomorrow?”
“A hundred each.”
“No special price, ‘ey? For an old friend?”
Lionel didn’t answer that one, but he said, “You need a twelve-gauge I can let you have one. You buy the shells.”
Armand said, “How about that ironworker? You take him out? The one yesterday?”
“Not too much. He’s a kind of guy, he don’t eat it, he won’t shoot it. I think it’s more he don’t like to clean ’em. My wife does it for hunters. She’s what you call a duck-plucker.” Lionel grinned. “A buck a duck.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“What guy?”
“Your friend, the ironworker.”
“It’s Wayne.”
Yeah, it was the name the woman in the real estate office had called. Wayne.
“You go deer hunting with him, ‘ey?”
“Yeah, he’s got a private woods there, on his property.”
“He seem like a nice guy,” Armand said. “What’s his name, Wayne?”
“Wayne Colson.”
“Where’s he live? Around here?”
“Over by Algonac.”
“He seem like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, I go over there,” Lionel said. “Sometimes me an my wife, my little girl, Debbie. His wife says, when we go over there, she wishes they had a little girl. She tells Debbie that.”
“So he’s married, ‘ey?”
“Yeah, his wife sells real estate.”
Armand said, “You kidding me.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It seems funny, that’s all, an ironworker married to a woman sells real estate.”
Lionel shrugged. He said, “They have a grown son, in the U.S. Navy,” and looked off at his sky again.
After a while Armand heard Richie yell out, “There’s some!” and turned to see land and a flock of birds Armand recognized rising out of an old willow on the bank. Blackbirds.
“I see I’m gonna have trouble with him,” Lionel said, grinning. “He’ll be shooting at coots thinking they’re mallards.”
Richie was turned around in the bow.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ducks don’t land in trees,” Lionel said. “Birds, yeah, but not any ducks I know of. That’s the first thing you have to learn.”
Armand saw the way Richie was looking past him at Lionel. He said, “Let’s go over there and stretch our legs.”
“If you want to,” Lionel said.
He brought them to the bank where the willow stood empty now and cut the motor. Richie grabbed the tall weeds, stepped out of the boat and both feet sank into mud and water. Armand saw what not to do and jumped past the soft edge of the bank, landed okay, but felt the ground mushy beneath him, weeds up to his waist. He looked around at Lionel, still in the boat.
“You coming?”
“I don’t need to stretch any.”
Armand said to Richie, “Do him,” and expected to hear some excuse. Out here? It’s too open. Something like that.
No—he reached under his coat behind him, brought out that nickelplate, cocked it, aimed with two hands like in the movies and shot Lionel three times as he was trying to get out of the boat, that third shot punching him out to drop in the water. They were quick shots too, no hesitation. Loud, but flat out here in the open, the sound just now fading.
“Well, you took more than one,” Armand said, “but you knocked him down.”
Richie was looking at Lionel facedown in the water, one arm hooked over the side of the boat.
“That pissed me off,” Richie said, “telling me ducks don’t land in trees. I know ducks don’t land in trees.”
Back at Lionel’s, before they got in the Cadillac and drove off, Armand went in the house and came out with two Remington pump-action shotguns and a couple of camouflaged duck-hunting coats and hats. Richie said, “What’s all that for?” Armand told him he’d see. Then, when Armand left the island by way of the swing bridge, heading for Wallaceburg, Richie said, “Aren’t we going home? Man I have to get cleaned up.” Armand told him to put on one of the duck-hunting coats, they were going to Windsor. They’d leave the car at the airport in long-term parking and pick out another one for the time being. “Then come home?” Richie said. Then cross back at Detroit through customs, Armand said, couple of duck hunters on their way to Algonac. And find out where the ironworker lived.
“What’s the big hurry?” Richie said. “If he lives there, he’s gonna be there.”
“You want to do something else?”
“Well, have a few beers, anyway. Watch some TV.”
“After we find their house, take a look at it. You hear Lionel? I’m pretty sure that real estate woman’s his wife. The one saw us.”
“The one was with him?” Richie sounded surprised. “She didn’t do nothing. Was the guy hit us.”
Armand turned his headlights on the blacktop moving through farmland, getting dark out there. “I forgot you have to be pissed off,” Armand said. “All this blowing away you did, you never blew away a woman, ‘ey?”
“I never felt a need to.”
“Well, you better feel one now.”
Richie was silent. Armand wondered if maybe it was the first time in his life the guy had stopped to think before opening his mouth. Armand waited another few moments before saying, “Let me tell you something. You don’t ever leave things undone. You don’t ever think somebody’s not gonna remember you. Me and my brothers went in that hospital in Sarnia—”
“You already told me about it.”
There, he was talking again without thinking.
“Listen to me. My younger brother, Jackie, is holding the elevator. My older brother, Gerard, is watching so nobody comes in the room. He’s standing inside by the door, has it open a little bit. A nurse comes down the hall. She don’t go by, she opens the do
or and there’s my brother right in front of her, face-to-face, close. He takes her quick into the bathroom, turns out the light and tells her don’t make a sound.”
“I’d have coldcocked her,” Richie said.
“I finish with the guy and say to my brother, ‘What about her in there?’ In the bathroom, the door’s closed. He says, ‘I don’t think she saw me good.’ I say to him, ‘What are you telling me? You don’t think she saw you?’ He says, ‘No, she didn’t see me good.’ It was seven months later the police come to the Waverley Hotel—”
Richie said, “The Royal Canadian Mounties?”
“The Toronto Police, that’s enough. They come to the hotel where we stay there looking for the Degas brothers. This time they find only Gerard, take him in and that nurse points to him in the lineup. Yes, he was in the room when the man was killed. They find my brother Jackie and shoot him down, they say resisting arrest. That could be true. They find me, the nurse takes a look; no, she never saw me. They have to let me go. See, but I lost my two brothers—one dead, one in prison for life, because Gerard says she didn’t see him good. That one time . . . Why did he say that? I don’t know, maybe he looked at her. Maybe he liked her face, I don’t know. I’m never gonna figure that out.”
Richie said, “Well, did you ask him?”
“Sure, I asked him. He don’t know either. Now he’s at Kingston trying to figure it out.”
They drove through the dusk in silence.
Until Richie said, “Well, I don’t see there’d be much difference anyway, whether it’s a man or a woman. . . . Is there?”
“Not if you don’t think about it,” Armand said.
7
* * *
LATE AFTERNOON, cool and clear outside, three days since the excitement at the real estate office, the phone rang. It was on the wall next to the window over the kitchen sink.
Carmen knew it was Lenore because she had her hands in meat loaf, working a raw egg, onions and bread crumbs into the ground beef and pork, and her mom only called when she was in the middle of something or in the bathroom. If Carmen called her mom, Lenore would answer, “Who is this?” in case it might be an obscene phone call. She had worked at one time in the telephone company’s Annoyance Call Bureau and knew all about dirty-mouth pervert callers. Just last month she had changed her number after twice answering the ring and the caller hung up without saying a word. She told Carmen, “That’s how they find out if you’re home, so they can come in and rape you.” Wayne said to Carmen, “Tell her don’t worry, once the guy got a look at her she’d be safe.”