The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  “You’ll get two million,” Bourque said, hugging him.

  Poppy shook his head, his nose still shiny from its scrubbing, his ear with a little dab of paint. He wanted to know, what were they getting into and why were they doing this? And more importantly, who did the ticket belong to?

  “You can’t hide this,” he said over and over again in French. “Sooner or later someone will know and we will have to go to jail or at least pay everything back and be a laughingstock. But even if we don’t it’s not the right thing to do.”

  For ten minutes they tried to convince him. Little by little he became argumentative and said they weren’t being honest.

  “Honesty has nothing to do with it—it’s our ticket,” Bourque said.

  “If you found it on the road I would say yes, but if you took it from someone else—I would say no!”

  “Well we found it on the road!” Alex said.

  “No you didn’t—or you would have already told me, and anyway you would have cashed it yourself—you want me to cash it so people won’t suspect.”

  “You are being very silly. Two million is staring you in the face!” Alex said.

  Poppy shrugged and said he wanted to go home.

  “Don’t you say another word, Poppy,” Leo kept saying, “or you won’t get your million.”

  “But I don’t want a million if it isn’t mine,” he replied.

  “But it will be just like saying it is yours,” Alex said, “so there is no problem.”

  Poppy looked at Alex quickly, with a sudden unfamiliar expression, for he hardly knew him, and who was this pipsqueak to give him orders? Then he turned and softly spoke in French to Bourque. Bourque could not convince him that this was for the best.

  They had no idea he would say no, so emphatically. But once he did, something more tragic became apparent. It was this: They could not let him go home and keep the ticket for themselves. He would tell on them. So they had to convince him not to tell. And Alex pulled off on a side road.

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “I never said I would,” Poppy answered.

  But this was the problem: The more they spoke to him the more insane both of them seemed, Alex shouting in English and Bourque shouting in French, Alex slapping the steering wheel and Bourque banging his fist.

  “You are making it all too complicated,” Alex said. “It was supposed to be easy!”

  Little Poppy sat with his arms folded, staring glumly straight ahead.

  “Take me back home,” he said. “I have to finish my signs—I don’t want a beer.”

  And he said this glumly and emphatically, and sighed. Then he glanced at them quickly, sneezed, and folded his arms again.

  Everyone was silent in the truck, hearing the tick-ticking after the engine shut off. No one spoke for five minutes.

  But then, suddenly it dawned on them all at the same instant that they couldn’t let him out of the truck until he said yes. Poor Poppy realized this at the same instant they did.

  “Yes—okey-dokey—take me home and I will do it tomorrow!”

  They were both silent and in deep fear, because by that time neither of them believed him. So Poppy said it again. He said it and also stated that he could walk home, because it wasn’t that far. His legs started to tremble.

  “Yes,” he kept saying, “of course yes, of course yes.”

  But his legs were trembling so much they didn’t believe him.

  “You’re just saying that now but you don’t mean it,” Alex said.

  “Of course I mean it—I mean it a whole lot—just let me go home.”

  “Why do you want to know who the ticket belongs to—?”

  “It will become known—that’s all, boys—and why do I go to mass and take communion, to do something like this?” He told them the scheme would be discovered, and sooner or later they would regret it.

  “Communion,” Bourque said, slapping Poppy across the head.

  Poppy became emotional, and began to plead. Tomorrow he would go to Moncton and cash it. Then he winked and shrugged.

  “I have to see to my vegetables,” he kept saying. “I don’t want to have a drink.” No, it was too late to go to Brennen’s, he had to see about his vegetables. His dark, arthritic hands fidgeted on his lap as he sat there. “I want to see my nieces,” he said. But his nephew kept pleading with him to understand that they couldn’t let him go until he promised. So he promised and promised. He asked if they had a bible, and said he would swear on it.

  “I don’t have any bible!” Alex screamed.

  The more Poppy promised, the more they believed he was lying. Then Leo began to beat him to make him promise. He promised and was beaten some more.

  “I said I promise—how many times do I have to promise before I want to see my nieces! Stop hitting my ears!”

  Alex listened to all of this, and became frightened when Poppy tried to climb over him to get out of the cab.

  “Stop him—he is going to run away and tell!” Alex shouted as the little man tried to climb over him. Alex grabbed him by the shirt and held him.

  “I want to see my nieces!” he cried, trying to open the door.

  Then there was a sound as if air had escaped. Alex did not know that was the sound of a knife going into Old Poppy’s lung. Poppy put his hands up and fell back, trying to breathe. He tried to breathe for thirty seconds, his face in agony, and then sat still, in almost the same position he had been in when he was sitting there talking.

  “Uh-oh,” Bourque said, “we’re in trouble.”

  Alex was trembling. He remembered the lively little man shrugging his shoulders a moment before, his nose shiny, the paint on his ear.

  Alex tried to speak but could not. Five minutes passed and neither spoke. Bourque kept nudging Poppy to wake up. But the body did not wake.

  “We have to hide the body—no body, no crime—” Leo said finally.

  But he himself was not so ruthless, just terrified. Because, he realized, they could not stop now. He had done some things in his life but never anything like this.

  “I never believed I could do nothing like this,” he said. “That’s where the ticket got me!”

  But after another long pause he added that all they had done had come to this moment, and in a way could be justified if they just kept going. But that keeping going was imperative to the nature of its justification.

  “Well, well, well—we are in a pickle.”

  For some reason Alex remembered that one day while at the spring to get water, MacIlvoy told him to always remember that if there was a gathering of two or more, in the name of Jesus Christ, then Christ too would be present and ill would never happen. He thought of this when he looked at the faded palms from Palm Sunday made into a cross on his uncle’s rear-view mirror. He snapped them away with his hand.

  Leo looked at him now and took an instant dislike to who he saw.

  “You bastard I should report you to the police for trying to pay me off—who do you think I am—can be bought off—who the fuck are you to decide if or not I can be bought off—that’s what my boss thought—he didn’t trust me after I brought him the bid.”

  “Shhh,” Alex said.

  “I tried to be like you. At one time I thought you were the big cheese. We have to get him somewhere—I don’t want to, but God, what else are we going to do now?”

  For a long time they said nothing to each other. Then Leo spoke softly.

  He was rational. They had shortened the man’s life by perhaps a year. But this was for thirteen million. You either went through with this now, or spent the rest of your life in jail. As a matter of fact, jail, he said, was even a better incentive to go through with it, for Bourque said he had been in jail and it had some mean characters.

  “Mean—you don’t know what mean is—you think your uncle was mean—wait, and you will see what mean is, and what mean can do!”

  But after a deliberating silence both realized there was something else wrong. I
f Bourque took the ticket now, people would assume it was his uncle’s—that was the catch now. The ticket would be assumed to be the reason for the death, and this is what reason assumed entirely. People would not understand it was even more complicated than that. So the body had to disappear. Forever.

  “I was right,” Bourque said, “I should have just cashed it myself. Nothing would have happened, you were the one to talk me out of it—I could have said I found it on the street, they would have to give me something—but no, you talked me out of it.” And he stared unpleasantly at Alex. “You have done a lot to me in this life,” he said, “and I won’t forget it—I won’t!”

  “I can’t do anything—we have to go to the police.”

  “Don’t be absurd. You think your uncle thinks little of you now. Wait until he finds this out! You think Minnie is disappointed in you—wait!”

  He then was silent. Now and again he would prop Poppy’s head up, to see his eyes and wizened little face, and then drop it again. He was remarkably calm.

  “I think he is really dead. Yes sirree. So we have to make sure the body isn’t discovered—until—at least until after we get the money. If I have to do it all myself it will cost you another million.” He said this not with any great belief that this would sway Alex, but because he felt he had to say it. Saving face was everything now, with this little Alex beside him.

  Leo had to wrap his own right hand because it was cut, and he had to speak very moderately about why he did it. He also said Poppy was bothering him, and making him go to the Catholic church, which wasn’t right.

  “He kept saying it would change my life around—every Sunday he came by to pick me up for mass—every Sunday! He didn’t know the pain I was in, to think a simple church could get rid of it. You know what that’s like—no, I never liked Poppy.”

  Then after he settled down he said, “Think of the possibilities, and besides, I did it for you—”

  Seeing that Alex was in a terrible state he tried to speak of other things. He spoke of how the moon was nice, as golden as a nugget, and asked Alex if he ever in his life snared rabbits, because he had when he was a boy. Besides, he said, Poppy wouldn’t have stopped, he would have kept on until something bad happened. He would have told his nieces, and all of them were little snitches. They all of them walked about the house nosy for the sake of it. Best to get rid of the problem now. He sounded very rational. Perhaps as rational as anyone sounded in the common room in a dispute over world revolution. Those people, too, had lost their moral compass and floundered into middle age. The thing was, though there was uncertainty in his life, Bourque had never imagined himself killing anyone. Alex, who he had first bullied and then tried to emulate, had made him do this.

  All this while the little body was propped between them, with the lobster on the T-shirt. Poppy’s eyes, half opened, stared straight at Alex. His hands were folded on his lap, and his sneakers had been tied with big bows. It was as if he were about to sing Hank Williams.

  When Alex saw his uncle’s house he couldn’t go in there, so he turned down the next lane, Chapman’s lane, and jumped out of the truck and got sick, and Bourque ran and caught up to him. He made sure the body was hidden because the dash light was on. That was fortuitous. They were standing in the lane for three minutes or so before Amy, returning from her course on Saint Mark, came up the shore path in their direction.

  “What are we going to do—what are we going to do?”

  “I said we would find the ticket,” Leo answered, “and we did. We just have to put the body somewhere where it will never be found. He was an old man, maybe he went for a walk and died—that’s probably it, you see—so don’t blame me. Think of the pressure I was under.” Although Bourque had loved Poppy on the way down, now he had turned completely against him.

  “I don’t want the ticket—how in God’s name could one want a ticket after this?” Alex asked.

  “But that’s totally absurd. Totally. And I will tell you why. Nothing makes any sense unless we use the ticket. Poppy’s death is meaningless unless we go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure you this is why I did what I did—for the ticket—and I will do more for the ticket if I have to. If we give the ticket up, the world is absurd—and you can’t go through with the least little thing—so answer me—do you want the ticket or not—”

  Remembering nothing but the sweet smell of the pine air freshener in the cab and the heavy oppressive sound of Poppy’s breath leaving his lungs, Alex turned and staggered away.

  But Bourque called him back, and said simply, “In for a penny in for a pound—we have to take care of the body—have to or give me all your millions—remember you are back to six million now—I still get my finder’s fee!”

  MacIlvoy had told Alex something else that day at the spring. Alex had asked MacIlvoy what had happened to his dreams of playing hockey in Montreal. MacIlvoy had smiled and said, “Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.”

  Strange how soft the night was, and music coming from far across the river for the grand opening of the fair. And what else—yes, yes, yes, the most faint traces of Beethoven’s song of joy.

  —

  AMY HEARD THE SAME SONG OF JOY AS SHE WAS APPROACHING her house. She was trembling with anxiety.

  She woke the next day and, for the first time in her life, felt a sense of dread. What had happened the night before?

  Later that day, after she picked blueberries in the field, she heard that Poppy Bourque had disappeared. The first thing she thought of was how coincidental it was to have seen his nephew the night before. Then, standing with a pail of blueberries in her hand, waiting for her mother to come from across the field, a feeling of trepidation suddenly filled her.

  Nonsense, she thought, it was nothing!

  Alex Chapman was a well-known man all over the river who had done nothing if not treat her kindly.

  Why, he was the one who wanted to give them $700. Maybe that’s why he put their number on the receipt, to help them get it, who knows!

  —

  ALEX DID NOT GO OUT UNTIL THE NEXT EVENING, AND HE crept up to the highway just before sunset. He had not washed in over a week, and he could smell his own sweat permeate the air. He had remembered the loonies in his pocket and was going to buy a small box of tea. With everything he saw, and every car that passed, he felt a kind of physical fault beyond endurance—an almost needlelike shame swept over him.

  The little old man who had been painting his signs about his vegetables, the hands folded on the old man’s lap, when he finally died, the picture of him Alex once saw, in front of a big heap of sawdust. Or the times he listened when Alex was upset and said: “Don’t worry, trust in God and all will work out!”

  What god did Poppy trust in, to go for a drink? And yet this is what he thought all day, what Poppy had told him: “Don’t worry, trust in God and all will work out!”

  It was now coming to the end of summer, and Alex heard from some of the men that Sam Patch was coming back to the river for vacation after a nine-month rotation.

  “He’ll have nice money,” one of them said.

  “Damn right,” said a second.

  “Ahhhh,” Alex said bitterly, and he left into the dry dust settled across the parking lot.

  Now they all went away to work, for there was nothing here. But Alex’s problem had been that he in fact was trained for nothing and he could no more get a good job away than he could here. What could he do? Fix a roof? No. Run a motor? No. Clean an underground skip? But there was something more: he had always thought he was too good for those jobs, and now it was too late. The fact was Patch would bring back money—perhaps as much as $50,000. He would buy the car Minnie wanted, the furniture, and remodel the house.

  What could Alex ever do to impress them now unless he stayed the course and cashed the ticket?

  If Bourque wanted to impress his wife, who did Alex wish to impress?

  He walked along the shoulder of the road with his head down, his little box
of tea in his hand. After a time he could hear a truck slowly running along behind him. He turned, and stared. Leo Bourque was driving his old uncle Poppy’s truck. When Alex turned, and not until he turned, Leo blew the horn, and Chapman jumped. Bourque pulled alongside and rolled down the window. Sitting beside Leo was his daughter and two little nieces. They were all dressed as big vegetables. They were supposed to go to the fair with Poppy, and stand by his booth as bean sprouts.

  “Hello,” Leo said. “We’re looking for my uncle—you haven’t seen him, have you?”

  Alex stood on the side of the road, his mouth opened, in a kind of anticipatory agony, with mosquitoes coming up out of the ditch to land on his arms.

  Leo said they thought Poppy might have come up here, as he sometimes did.

  The little girl, Leo’s daughter, Bridgette, smiled, some of her front teeth still missing; the other little girls smiled too, then they all spoke at the same time to Leo in French.

  “Shhhh,” Leo kept saying in a fatherly way, laughing at their antics. “They say your fly’s down,” he said.

  Alex realized this was true, and that his shirttail was sticking out of it.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Alex managed as he tucked his shirttail back in and zippered the zipper. The little girls started to laugh, grabbing at each other’s hands.

  “So,” Leo said. “If you see him, tell him little Bridgette is waiting.” And he winked. Bridgette was his daughter, who now stayed with his sister and her two cousins. She was, or had been, Poppy’s favorite, and Bourque himself loved her and wanted only the best for her.

  Alex had turned by then and gone into the woods, and at every shadow he pleaded forgiveness.

  By the time he got home darkness had settled over the earth—and while he sat at the table wild thoughts came to him: of running up the road to Minnie and telling, or of going to confession. The idea—yes, the terrible idea—that if he confessed he would be free.

  As he was thinking this, the telephone rang.

  “Guess where I am? I am in Poppy’s house—everything looks normal—you must know I am doing things normal. It is normal to look for my uncle, so I came up the road—you must learn to be calm—I can’t let Bridgette know anything. I can’t—if I have a chance I will do anything to keep her from knowing and get my wife back. So we can be a family again.”