The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  Thinking he was being made fun of, Alex roared at him, and turned away in the mud and rain, leaving Sam to wipe his nose with his sleeve and watch his old friend walk off.

  So as he ate his corn and beet soup, Alex, in a very deliberate way, was prepared to save his company by giving up the bid. Taking the amount—secret from everyone except him, Sam Patch, and his uncle—to his uncle’s main competition. If his uncle did not get the bid, he would have to take desperate action, and finally call on him, Alex, to save him, and Alex had a plan with which to save him, and would save him when he was called on. But first he must destroy the old man’s faith in one person: Sam Patch. He did not look upon this as revenge but as business acumen.

  Deciding such, Alex went downriver for the first time in years, along the cold broken highway of his youth. He was struggling through a great sadness when he saw the same potholes and ruts along the road he had seen as a child, and the same trees bent forward in the summer wind.

  He made a call from the phone booth, and made an appointment with someone. The only man he knew, down here, who would meet him. He was now in a fight for his very existence, and so had to rely upon someone from his past.

  That night at a place called the Old Seminary where he had once studied Saint Augustine and which was now a nightclub and a strip bar, in the haze of late summer he met a man very low on the totem pole at Geru Fouy Construction. Alex was forced to trust him, he decided after he had met with him.

  The man was Leo Bourque.

  Leo, who had survived many difficulties. Leo, the boy who had bullied Alex but then wanted to be his friend when Alex had his name in the paper about his bird drawings, and who had written him a postcard. Leo, who had asked him to be best man at his wedding, thinking he would impress everyone if Alex Chapman, who wrote columns, turned up to be his best man!

  Leo was ecstatic to meet with him, and had prepared what he would say. But it came out a garbled profusion of big words. He also wanted to show his authority by ordering drinks and snapping his fingers. This appalled Alex, but he was in no position to say so.

  Leo wore a summer shirt which showed his strong chest and heavy, muscled forearms, each with a tattoo.

  “A hundred and twenty—that’s pretty low for such a highway,” Leo said. But he was interested in this bid, and Alex found himself thinking, in passing, that this was a man who would never be a threat or concern to him anymore—

  “So you are giving this to me to take to Fouy?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Why?” Leo asked.

  Alex bent forward and spoke softly. He told Leo he wanted to save his uncle from the disaster of bidding on a plowing job that might cost him everything. But this was not at all the case—or not all the case.

  Bourque reached over and grabbed his arm, and said: “But you think Fouy should then go lower.” For he believed that he had made a mistake about Alex, who had proven himself, and now he wanted to respect him.

  “I am trying to have this work out for everyone. I am only saying if you want the bid, bid lower—even a thousand dollars, that will stop Chapman. You already have the French side, so your losses could be offset. I want to stop my uncle just this once. Next year I’ll take over and we can work something out—maybe you can work for me.”

  “That would be something,” Leo said, very pleased at this unexpected change of fortune.

  Bourque tried to think of something to say which would reflect his intellectual reason, but then shrugged. He had thought a lot about the world and his place in it, and in the last two years he had been trying desperately to hold on to his marriage by proving he was as bright as Cid Fouy, who he knew his wife was somewhat interested in.

  This, then, might be the one last chance he had to do it.

  In truth Mr. Bourque was far more intelligent in these things and had known men like Patch and Alex’s uncle all his life. He was, however, a simple man, he had had no advantage that Alex himself had. You could see in his face that he was perplexed by what Alex was doing. (And then, of course, not perplexed.)

  “I will see—but I don’t know—this is a big thing to do,” Bourque said, suddenly looking cunning, like he had on that school bus. “I mean, sometimes you do something like this, and if it backfires you are in trouble.”

  “How could it backfire?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think of how good things will be for you if you do it,” Alex said, positively. “You’ll be something like a hero!”

  “Sure I will. But if I do it, and it does backfire, will you help?”

  “Of course,” Alex said. “Why, of course.”

  They parted like old friends. And, in fact, they were.

  —

  BUT ON THE WAY HOME, ALEX HIMSELF STARTED TO SHAKE. God, whoever it was, was playing with him. For the first time in his life he sensed this. And yet what nonsense. When he got home, he walked by his uncle’s house and saw Old Chapman calmly reading the paper, calmly drinking his evening tea. Later, Young Chapman hid his face in the pillow. Why had he decided this? Out of some terrible spite!

  For once let me have some spite, he thought.

  He did not sleep all night. Like others, he gathered at the office two days later to discover if they had got the tender. Some of the men walked outside with their hands behind their backs, staring at half-dried clay-caked puddles. Others leaned against the trucks and loaders, their whole lives teaching them that it was better to be resigned.

  Down at Geru Fouy, Bourque went through with it, worried if he did, and more worried if he didn’t. Alex was the one boy he had written to when he was in the Far North, and he felt strangely that he had a camaraderie with him. Whether he did or did not would be borne out soon enough.

  —

  THE BID, HIS UNCLE’S BID, AND SAMMY PATCH’S GUARANTEE, failed by $1000. Everyone turned to one another in shock and spoke about what to do. Old Chapman left the office and walked back toward the house without a sound.

  The old man was too smart not to know that someone had given up the bid. For three nights he stood out in the yard, amid the swarm of gnats and blackflies, impervious to sight or sound, as he drank one bottle of wine after another. And at the height of his despair, Alex, terrified that he himself would be suspected, told his uncle that he believed it had to be Sam himself.

  “Why would he do it?” Old Chapman said, lurching forward, his face coming up close to Alex’s, his breath hot and smelling of alcohol. Alex once again face to face with this tyrant, as old and as tired as he was, became as he always did, a little boy.

  “I don’t know—but he was the one who guaranteed the bid, and was adamant that you bid just that amount. Why couldn’t you have bid a thousand lower—that’s what I was after!”

  Of course, he had been after a bid thirty-five thousand higher.

  At first the old man looked puzzled, and then furious.

  The next evening he called Sam Patch, and over an hour—speaking, arguing, and haranguing—he told his foreman to go. He did it in front of men there, to show that though broken he still had authority. He said that after twenty years it might be time to find another manager. It was in fact like a general firing his commander at the end of a poor campaign.

  Sam could not believe it. There was in him a feeling like the end of a marriage. He actually broke down and cried in the yard.

  “I think we can get it all back,” he was saying. Out on the highway Minnie stood watching. Amy stood behind her, looking out under her arm.

  Alex could not bear to watch and turned his back and shook.

  Three weeks later Sam left to work out west in the oil patch north of Edmonton. It was perhaps the best thing he ever did.

  Alex went to his uncle and said, penitently, that he would do what he could to save the business.

  “What can you do?” the old man asked in a kind of terrible resignation, mashing his hands together.

  “You will thank your stars when you see how much money Fouy loses, and next
year we will be back in business.”

  This, too, was the old man’s one hope: that Fouy would lose everything on the grade this winter.

  ——

  Alex set about that late fall, reorganizing the business on much leaner terms, laying off men left and right, men who had been faithful to his uncle for years—just the very thing he had believed he himself would never do. They stood in the office bewildered and feigning a kind of imperial wisdom as they were let go.

  There was just one thing: there was almost no snow all that long winter. They could have easily made a profit of about $100,000. But without the main contract the business went down. Alex Chapman was in charge.

  The old man looked at him almost heartbroken.

  Alex tried to forget that look and go back to sculpting. But he couldn’t. The talent he had seemed blocked. He found that he was only half as good as he once was. And that wasn’t good enough for him. The idea that Sam was blamed and he didn’t stand up for him, but in fact accused him, was a great cloud over his spirit. The last piece he had done, and was ever to do properly, was the stupid Virgin Mary.

  What he had done to all those men, to his old uncle, seemed to close talent off from him.

  It was twelve months ago that Muriel died in her sleep, ancient prayer beads laced in her fingers.

  After this, a rumor started that Old Chapman was senile and quite dangerous to himself. People were afraid of a suicide. If Minnie had not gone to the house and fed him, people said he would not have eaten. And why would Minnie have done this? What inexorable law of self-denial or human understanding allowed her to? She simply did, for no one else did, and the business was over.

  Alex hoped to get the man recognized as having diminished capacity, so he could take over what was left before it was gone. With this in mind he went to the lawyers three times in the last few months. But the three different lawyers would not take the case. For the name Jim Chapman still retained that!

  —

  BUT WHAT WAS WORSE WAS STILL TO COME. LEO BOURQUE was himself out of work. How did it happen?

  In a strange way it happened exactly because he had done what Alex had asked.

  One hot day, a few months ago, something terrible happened. He fell from the loader and busted his hip. His boss fired him. His wife then left him for the boss. Bourque discovered they had been waiting for some time to do this. Now that Fouy had the entire old highway in his grasp, they did not care what happened to Leo. When he got out of the hospital, she had moved out.

  In the resulting family dispute his boss sided with his wife, managed to protect her from Leo’s “horrible temper.”

  Fouy’s takeover from Chapman enabled him to seduce the wife, who had worked in his office.

  Bourque was left reeling, stunned, and shaken. He went to Alex, looking for help. His bank account was emptied and he had nowhere to go. In his own rambling fashion he blamed Alex for his wife’s unfaithfulness, and wanted one thing: money. All the money Alex could get. At first Alex did not catch on. Then he realized it was blackmail. Bourque was taking pills because of the pain in his hip, and he was becoming addicted.

  Alex, the ethicist, did not understand the urgency. Bourque, whose life was at stake, did.

  “I gave you the bid,” Alex said. “Why would you come here—I will get the police is what I will do.”

  But Bourque was no longer under the mistaken impression that Alex was someone very special, the boy he had tried to communicate with when he was up north. Now angry at having done Alex’s dirty work, he was just as incensed at himself.

  “Oh, go get the police—but before you do, you have to give me five hundred. Before the big bid, Cid was always worried—now he’s a success and my wife’s gone to him—and whose fault is that!”

  There was in a strange way some truth to what he was saying. But he was more dumbfounded than malevolent, and he looked at the ground as he spoke. His left hand shook, as if he couldn’t control it. This, too, had happened since he fell from the loader. He had taken night courses to try and learn English better, and now this was given up. That is, in mid-life, with as many delusions and false hopes as most people, his life was put on hold, or turned in another direction.

  It was the mirror image of what Alex had wanted to happen to himself in regards to Sammy Patch. Sammy to go away, the business to succeed, and he to have Minnie. It had simply happened on the other side of the lost highway to chubby Cid Fouy.

  In spite of everything, Alex asked Leo to wait for the five hundred, and prayed for him not to come back. But he did.

  “You said you would have it—I have people I have to pay, bills and things.”

  Alex realized it was in some way his doing, and could not rid himself of the responsibility of Leo Bourque. Alex’s stomach pained, and his chest hurt. He had no more money—not a bit.

  “But you have to, I am already living in Poppy Bourque’s shed!”

  “Okay, we will see,” Alex said. “Give me another week or so and I promise things will be better! I’ll meet you at Brennen’s and give you the money then!”

  They had been on the school bus together as kids, and now this! But as always with Alex, he was sure there was some way to extricate himself from responsibility, and do what he had to do to make the best of it.

  That was when he refused to take Jim’s truck unless he was paid the five hundred he felt owing to him. He needed the money desperately and could tell no one why.

  “You won’t do this one thing for me?” Jim had said, sounding more hurt then he had in years.

  “Not until you pay me.”

  “Pay you for what?”

  “My severance from the company.”

  But there was no severance. There was no company.

  So his uncle took the truck in.

  —

  AS MUCH AS HE HATED HER FOR HER BETRAYAL, ALEX STILL wanted his first love. So tonight he was going over to see Minnie and to fool her. Intellectually, he was in a terrible position. In a way he was planning to steal the lotto ticket from his uncle, the tyrant, to keep her respect. What would come of his self-respect if he was a derelict left with nothing, after years of preaching his wisdom to her? In fact, his vanity had always allowed a lack of personal integrity that became more pronounced now that he was in this bind. Alex knew Sam Patch would come home sometime at the end of the summer, perhaps with as much as $80,000 in his pocket, maybe more. Alex, who had always said Sam needed a better life, now hated the prospect that Sam might return and allow his wife and daughter to have one. A life that would in fact shine brighter than his own. This alone allowed a pathological reassessment of his role in the world. He became more driven to succeed at something.

  But as Alex came to the small house, off the back highway, near Arron Falls Road, a place of quiet mystery, he suddenly thought, as if he was studying Thomas Merton again: Is this the way of my and Leo’s chastisement? (For some reason, he did not know why, he included Leo.)

  He waited for an answer in the dull silence, one that of course didn’t come. In fact, he had waited for an answer for twenty years, ever since Harold Tucker had refused to allow him to pass.

  There was a smell of heavy water in the clouds, and he looked up at the dark murky sky, as if there were strange beings above his head he might touch. They might be all about him now, just as many people believed, watching him, praying for him, asking him to be still and know that I am God.

  A first tentative flash of lightning was seen.

  Inside was like all small houses here along the dark back road. The kitchen was where people lived. The living room had an old sunken couch and a huge TV—but the old house was in a poor location and they could get only one channel. There was a bear head on the wall, from a Sam Patch hunt long ago. Could Sam have earned more, and better, if he had not been a protégé of old Jim Chapman for twenty years. Of course. Jim had taken advantage of his poverty and uncertainty at a time when he was a boy to keep him in poverty. Was this heartless? Chapman had grown
up himself in the same way, even more brutal, and knew nothing better. So to Jim it was just business.

  In the back room Amy, the child, slept at night, with a statue of the Virgin Mary by her bed.

  Tonight Alex asked the little girl how she was, though he could not forget that he had once placed money in his back pocket to implement her destruction. So no matter how much he wanted to reassure Minnie of his care, his smile always showed insincerity. It was just that way. It had been fine when he was at university, where all his concerns, sincere or insincere, were the same concerns manufactured by others. But here, in this backwater—as he at one time liked to call it—it was different. Your concerns were understood to be manufactured or not. They had known him from a child. He was simply one of them, no matter how much he believed he knew.

  He looked at the little girl now, and she smiled, her eyes like burning and beautiful beads. She was terribly shy, and had been all her young life. She was sitting at the table putting snaps on her jeans and one of her shirts.

  “They will make me glow in the dark,” she said, laughing. But she was really putting them on because she loved to play the guitar and liked to look like a music star.

  —

  ALEX WAS BRIEF. DID THEY BY ANY CHANCE BUY A LOTTO ticket? Yes, Minnie said, for they had started to buy them every week. His look was pale and agitated and hair stuck out over his head in curls, his nose was sharp and white and still had some freckles. In fact, if he had done nothing in his life but collect garbage along the road, he would have looked the same. He wore thick, heavy glasses that he was continually taking off and putting on.

  When and where did they buy this ticket, he asked, adjusting his glasses once more. They bought it for the Wednesday draw, at the grocery store in town. He could hear himself sounding officious and earnest—he suddenly realized he disliked this kind of voice in almost everyone else. The little girl looked at him curiously, smiled slightly, and then put her head down again. Then she looked up under her eyebrows at him, for a second.

  Did they still have it?

  His Minnie Mouse looked puzzled, but said she must have and went into the den where the TV sat, to look among the papers. He watched her movement as if in a trance. Finally she came out with the ticket, held it in her hands, and started to tear it in two.