The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  BOURQUE, TOO, PRETENDED TO HIMSELF HE HAD NOT DONE this. In fact, he had discovered somewhat of an excuse. Poppy had been too friendly to those nieces of his? Well then—he found out, and had to protect them! You don’t do that! Anyone could see! How dare he! Bean sprouts, my foot! So this is what he would say if he had to say it, that Poppy was trying things with the girls. But he didn’t want to use that judicial plum unless he had to.

  Then he turned his thoughts toward Alex, and what must now be done with the body of Poppy Bourque. Just as it is when doing a bad job putting in drywall that you were forced to continue, and make corrections as you went along to mask your mistakes, so too with this. But he was also thinking it wasn’t too difficult to see that though Alex had done nothing, Bourque could say that Alex had done everything. That might be his real ticket out of this mess, and over the next few hours he began to slowly formulate Alex’s culpability.

  For he was too smart not to know that this is exactly what Alex must be doing with him.

  One could surmise it was Alex who discovered the ticket, and went alone to Poppy Bourque—he driving his uncle’s truck—he using the ticket from Minnie (his lover) to discredit his uncle’s ticket to Burton. All of this was a calculation which showed malicious intent. Bourque believed he had enough on Alex now in fact to turn him in. The knife he had used was the hunting knife he took off Alex’s table the first morning he woke there.

  He went to the phone to call Markus Paul and then reassessed this. No, now was not the time to turn anyone in. Paul would realize in a second they were both involved. He simply must control Alex in order to protect himself, until he got the money.

  In reality, Bourque wanted to change, be good like he was when a boy, but was in no position to change right now. He could change only after these things were accomplished. Then he could become a goodwill ambassador for his village. Shake hands, run for mayor. But until such time he had to stay near Alex, the big cheese.

  That is, they had been locked in union from the first time Alex had stepped on the school bus. Bourque had started to torment him then as a joke. Then when he reversed his opinion he tried to emulate him, spout big words. Though he was sorry for both these actions, it was too late now to stop.

  —

  ALEX VOMITED SIX TIMES IN THE TWO HOURS SINCE HE GOT home.

  As the day passed by, those who had not betrayed themselves in such a terrifying way went on with their lives. Alex had seen them at the funeral, and he had seen them in the small reception hall later on. He had seen Amy attending to old Irene McDurmot with such care and grace—something in all his life he himself had never been able to do.

  “Don’t let him get out of the truck!” he remembered yelling to Leo, as he threw up. That is what had caused everything to happen. His panic had caused Leo to panic as well. That split second had dissolved his life into wet ashes. Forever he would taste them. It might have been better not to panic.

  It was after ten that night when Bourque arrived. All of a sudden, out of the dark cool night, he was at the door. There was the smell of a shore fire and the wind blew the tops of the old ragged spruce.

  “So sorry about yer uncle,” Bourque said, holding out his hand.

  Alex simply watched Leo as he pulled up a seat.

  “Why aren’t you back over at your uncle’s house—it’s yours now,” Bourque said.

  He said the ticket was in a safe place and they would go down next week and get the money. That would be the best way to proceed. He said he had decided to give Alex his full share since he had been through so much, and justice called out for kindness.

  “Now you have to come with me,” Bourque said, soothingly. “You were the one who wanted me as a partner; now that I am, you have to help me as a partner would and should—for there is nothing you can do now to separate yourself from me. Once you decided, you decided—and now it is all up in the air. Just think,” Bourque said with an almost philosophical seriousness, “if you had waited just a few more days the ticket would have come to you. If you had gone to Jim in the first place it all would have been yours, but,” here he shrugged, “you did not—and now you are stuck. That is what is so particular about it, isn’t it—that is what is so strange about it. Here people said you knew what you were doing—I used to hear people say that, very much—and it made me want to be like you. I tried to read like you and talk like you, and sometimes when people mentioned your name I would butt in to say I knew you on the bus, and then I tried to protect your reputation. What propelled you to make the biggest mistake?” Here he continued, again philosophically, “So I have to protect you once more. If you don’t do what I say no one will believe you didn’t do what I say—for I will bring you down as far as I’m down.”

  “I don’t care what people think of me now,” Alex said, his head still lowered, fumbling still with his long thin fingers.

  “Of course you do—that’s who you are—”

  Alex was silent. He felt he did not deserve people saying that to him.

  “So come with me now,” Bourque shrugged a powerful shrug, “and we will take care of it all together. Forget the old life you had, it is now no longer possible; the life you have now is the only one to concentrate on.”

  Caught off guard Alex looked up sheepishly, his eyes brimming with tears. “It was all a mistake, so why can’t we just admit to it as a mistake and get on with our lives?”

  “Quite impossible. We—Markus Paul and I—are looking for my uncle—so I don’t know what direction that will lead us, but I am still hoping we find the old fellow safe and sound.”

  That sounded completely insane, except for one peculiar aspect: Bourque was now aligning himself with those on the outside who did not know anything about the sordidness that had happened.

  “Just remember—I am far better at this than you are. Whatever you were better at is no longer able to protect you. What I am better at is what just might see you through.”

  He got up and left the cabin, and Alex, after a moment, followed.

  They went out and down to the beach and walked along the cooling sand. Small waves limped to the shore saturated by seaweed and pebbles, and then drifted back, as if wanting no part of them. The clouds still moved above them, dreamy in August, and the moon shone down on a bit of the bay. They could smell driftwood smoke in the night from a party of boys and girls.

  A buoy made an outline in this moonlight, and yet all of this once so mesmerizing to Alex was now a torture. How could living cause so much dread? So much fear in a handful of dust? Alex only wanted to die. In fact, one of the local criminals, after killing an old man, had said, as a way to gain his parole, “I wish I could trade places with him, I cry my little bitty eyes out.” What this statement allowed was Alex to feel akin to a great and unwholesome shame.

  He was unsure of where they were going, until crossing into the back lot of Chapman’s he was suddenly aware. They had placed the body in the old junkyard behind the pilings near the collapsed cinder block—out of sight of the world. The place was a yard or two from where Alex had plodded up to break open the locks and look for the ticket. Only a few flies buzzed there during the funeral, and once when he saw one of the men walking toward the cinder block, he shouted, “No, not that way—go around if you need to get to the road!”

  Bourque whispered that they would now take this body and place it somewhere it would never be found. Bourque was certain that this would free them—just a few more hiding places and they would be free. He turned and said to his friend, “Do you believe in Christ?”

  “No,” Alex said, stopping up right behind him. (He had to say this. Part of him knew it was asked just so he would say no, and in his present state he would be forced to say no, even if Christ himself had asked it. But always there was still an option to break through the cinder block and say, I do believe; even now.)

  “Well then,” Bourque answered as lightheartedly as he could, “what is there to worry about? This is just men meting out what they mu
st.” Leo smoothed his mustache, and smiled slightly.

  Alex remembered here a line from Dostoevsky which he hated: “Without Christ in their lives mankind will fail.” It was a strange time to think of this line but he could not help thinking of it. He could not get it out of his mind. His head pulsed as if the very moonlight was coming in and out of it.

  “Big Cheese,” Bourque said, slapping Alex on the back.

  “Don’t call me Big Cheese anymore,” Alex said. It was what certain First Nations men had called him when he went to a band meeting and said he could solve their problems. Like so many professors he believed his one and only way to legitimacy was to posture intimacy with those who had lost everything.

  Bourque went with certainty to the old boards behind the cinder blocks and began removing them. The first thing Alex saw in the moonlight was the black sneakers with the big bows. He had tried to put all of this out of his mind. He still in some part of his mind thought of this as a nightmare that he would wake up from. That he would be happy, that he would be safe.

  Then when Bourque grabbed the man’s shoulders and asked Alex to grab his feet, the sudden smell was so powerful Alex thought he might vomit.

  “Now,” Bourque said, “can’t you tell—we have to bury it—that’s the only decent thing to do. That is, now that we are in this position I want to do the decent thing!” He looked with questioning and real sympathy upon Alex.

  “Where?” Alex said.

  “Where—you haven’t figured that out? In with your uncle—of course.”

  “What?”

  “Who in the world would look into a new grave?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course I am serious—!”

  “I won’t,” Alex stammered.

  But Bourque then simply moved away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “It’s no longer my problem—it’s on your uncle’s land, in your uncle’s truck—what in the world have I to do with it?”

  He was walking toward the highway with almost carefree exuberance.

  “Come back then,” Alex said, “come back—but isn’t it sacrilegious?”

  Leo returned, hands in pockets and shuffling a bit, and shaking his head.

  “You see, you are using old ideas—but Poppy needs a resting place too!”

  For a moment Alex couldn’t move, and then he did so, so quickly bending over to pick up the feet it startled Bourque.

  They moved the body slowly out under cover of darkness and through the woods, Leopold Bourque carrying a spade shovel.

  Far into the night, until after twelve, they waited for the priest’s light to go out, the body stiffened before them, still with the big white bows expertly tied, the eyes still half opened, the matted gray hair covered now with maggots.

  Then, struggling, they made it out to the freshly dug grave. In the distance was the grotto, with the candle Amy had lighted, still glowing. When Alex looked up he saw the Virgin’s arms reaching out to him just the way he had imagined when he’d wrung it out of his consciousness, as Auguste Rodin must have.

  But what was more burdensome was this: He knew of MacIlvoy’s tough, tough life, and the so-called “miracle” that had happened to him when he was nineteen. He entered the Holy Cross the year before Alex, just after this so-called miracle.

  He remembered Pavarotti’s “Ave Maria,” as he got on his knees and began to dig with his hands.

  “Just a song—the world is sold for a song,” Bourque commented when Alex mentioned it.

  “Yes, yes, you are right!”

  They were hidden by the big white pines that towered over all the other trees here, and they could hear the river sweep beneath them, just as Alex had when he first came here as a little boy. Using the name Chapman, until he realized it was unpopular—and then returning to his name, the name of his father, Roach. Then back to Chapman again, always a lost child searching for who he was. Still, he refused to look into the grave, as if by doing so he would be committing an injustice to the memory of the old man who had fed and clothed him all those years ago.

  Almost a sacrilege, if he believed in such a thing.

  They placed the body on top of the coffin, and Alex turned his head away.

  Bourque informed him that Poppy’s family had put up a reward of $500 for information. Well, he said seriously, they could afford no more—and the little girls themselves chipped in with their lemonade and cookie money. This only furthered Alex’s feeling of being lost. But he decided that Bourque might be insane.

  They went back to the cabin. Bourque then returned to normal conversation. He asked seriously if Alex would take possession of the house, and if he would try to start the construction company—plowing would still garner him some money, and he could build up the business again. He could get a good hay crop in, and use square bales instead of the big circular ones, for farmers liked them better. Besides, clover was in abundance over at Chapman’s Island, and he could let Greg Henry’s horses graze there.

  There was still contracting to be done, but he must have the proper attitude. He must be more compassionate than the old uncle.

  “Do it for the people,” Bourque said.

  But then Bourque stopped smiling. Lighting a cigarette, he spoke of predestination. He said he always had wondered about this idea—and did Alex? He was trying to be philosophical after a long day, like someone might after a hard day in the woods and gathered to camp at night.

  “There is no predestination,” Alex managed after a long enough pause.

  “How can you be so sure? It is just strange that I am at all involved in this,” he said, very seriously. “When if you had just been patient it all would have come your way. Say if you had just waited until today—this day—the ticket would have been yours, no one would have cared, and Poppy would still be dumping his sawdust.”

  His voice inflected a certain blame cast upon his friend. And he continued, not as an adult but now as an adolescent, a boy perhaps fourteen.

  “I did not mean to kill him,” he said. “He was going to phone your uncle—and I reacted—but you were the one who yelled. So it wouldn’t have stopped until I had used the knife. But you see, if I didn’t, if I had used common sense, the ticket would still be yours—all would be solved. So what I am saying now is that your predestination did not have to do with the ticket—but had to do with certain people whose lives are now in danger because of it.”

  “What people?”

  Bourque said nothing for a moment about what people. Bourque however realized that the initial plan had been the best—that is, the ticket should have nothing to do with him. He couldn’t simply take the ticket and go to Moncton. It might be discovered that something had gone on between him and Poppy. He reflected upon this almost happily, in a way showing his authority.

  “You see, we wanted them to think the ticket was Poppy’s. Now they will suspect it was his, and we can’t have that—we have to make them think you got it from your uncle. How strange. Everything is exactly the way it should be, except you have put yourself in a cage and have thrown away the key.”

  Alex listened, and stared strangely at this man who now seemed to control his breathing.

  “There is of course another teeny-weeny, small, and insignificant loose end.”

  “What loose end?” Alex managed.

  “Her.”

  “Who?”

  “Amy. She had to come up the lane at that very time—she is the only one who can link us together with the truck. So, I am thinking something must be done!”

  “Nothing—nothing more can be done,” Alex said. “Not to her.”

  Bourque lifted his hand. “You don’t think I killed someone—well, now you have to. I don’t want Bridgette to find out,” he said. “First of all, she will run and tell her mom!”

  Alex didn’t answer.

  “It is easy to make it all go away—so there are only the two of us. Besides, drowning in the summer—a girl like her sneaking o
ut at night to swim or see a boy—that’s what we’ll say happened—you see, it is what happened to Sam Patch’s sister fifteen years ago—remember?—well, that’s what happens—she’ll have gone swimming—I will put a bathing suit on her—and bingo!”

  “I won’t do anything to her—she can’t even swim, the little thing is frightened of water!”

  Bourque shrugged. “Even better. If you want anything out of this, you decide—it was you made a mess of it with them!”

  He stood. His presence towering over Alex but his voice was very reasonable, and who was he beginning to remind Alex of, with his mustache and his dark, blistering eyes? In some way Bourque had become what Alex had made him. His own portrait of Joseph Stalin, friend of the proletariat, that he once drew on the back of his scribbler when he was taking Russian history in 1982, and writing with faint wisdom against Ronald Reagan.

  Bourque turned, his hands quickly waving at something in front of him. Then he turned and came back.

  “I am simply saying that without God—or who you think is God—there is no truth, just a series of questions, and that means everything is true and nothing is true. So you have been implicated in a murder I could claim that I myself have had nothing to do with. I have as much of a chance as you to escape penitentiary.”

  Here he picked up the phone. Bourque seemed to be inflamed by his logic, and was perhaps dedicated to seeing out his threat.

  “Put the phone down,” Alex said, terrified. “Don’t be so crazy—I thought you were logical—”

  “I am—I am, at that! Who will ever miss a little girl from the Gum Road!”

  Then Bourque took the ticket and gave it to him.

  “You’re the one who has to keep it,” he said.

  “What if I tear it up?” Alex asked, taking it, his long white fingers trembling with the pressure of holding it, and smiling with civility at his friend.

  Bourque turned. He smiled slightly too. Then he said, “Go on—tear it—we are still in the same predicament! A dead body and a girl who knows we were together!”

  Alex could not bring himself to tear the ticket. Yes, if they hadn’t murdered he would have torn it—but now that they had murdered for it, how could he bring himself to waste so much money? It would be a waste of Poppy Bourque’s life, and Poppy Bourque meant more to him than that!