Straw Man

by Gerry Boyle

  “So everything’s okay there?” I said.

  “Fine. You can go do what you have to do.”

  “I thought I’d hit another gun seller or two, make a loop. East to Bangor, then shoot down to Winterport, then home.”

  “Okay.”

  “As long as all’s well on the home front.”

  “I don’t know about that, Jack,” Roxanne said. “But we’re fine. See you when you get home.”

  She rang off. I swerved as I punched in another number.

  “Hey,” Clair said.

  “How are things there?”

  “Quiet. Nobody.”

  “You watching the house?”

  Silence.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know I don’t have to ask. Can you stay there another couple of hours?”

  More silence.

  “Okay. I’ll be back by eleven-thirty. If they show up—”

  “Jack,” Clair said.

  “Right,” I said, and put the phone down.

  It was twenty miles to Bangor, the road running east and skirting a ridge so that there were hills close on the right and in the distance on the left. The foliage was brightest along the bogs, flares of red-orange from the swamp maples. I noted the colors but didn’t let my eyes linger, just drove fast and hard, passing on the straights, crowding impatiently on the curves, blasting past when slower cars moved right on the upgrades.

  I needed the interviews. I needed the story. I needed to be home.

  In Newburgh I cut north to the interstate, hammered the last eight miles into Bangor. At the base of the exit ramp I typed the address into my GPS, waited, and started off. The route wound through nondescript streets lined with drab houses, left, right, left. My destination, the GPS said, was on the right.

  It was a red ranch house with peeling white trim and beat-up snowmobiles on a trailer beside the driveway. There was a FOR SALE sign on the tongue of the trailer, a blue tarp bunched up on the pavement. There was no car or truck in the driveway, but the garage was closed, the shades on the house lowered tight.

  I parked and walked to the side door. A wooden sign to the right of the door said PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON. I didn’t care. I was there for the shotguns.

  Hesitating for a moment to listen, I knocked. Waited and then knocked again. My arm was raised for a third try when the door swung open. A man was standing there, short and skinny and maybe thirty, but it was hard to tell because his head was shaved. He had on baggy jeans and unlaced work boots and a sweat-stained T-shirt that said AC/DC.

  “Angus Young,” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “The singer. I called about the shotguns. My name’s Jack.”

  “Got cash?”

  “Sure do.”

  He flicked his bald head toward the room behind him and turned away. I followed.

  It was dim inside and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The blinds were closed, the flowers in the vase on the kitchen table dead and crisp. A cat scurried out from under the table and disappeared into the depths of the place, which smelled like litter box. The guy walked around the table and bent down and lifted the guns from the seats along the wall. He put them down beside the dead flowers.

  “These are them,” he said.

  There were two shotguns, a standard Remington 870 pump, and an old Sears single-shot, like a kid would get for Christmas circa,1950.

  “Good working order?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t use ’em?”

  “My old man did. Shot ducks,” he said.

  “He give up hunting?”

  “He died,” the guy said.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Two seventy-five for the pump, hundred and fifty for the single. Four hundred for both. Cash.”

  I picked up the pump and opened the chamber. It was empty. I racked the pump, pointed it at the floor, and pulled the trigger. It clicked. I picked up the single-shot and snapped the bolt back and forth. Pulled the trigger. Another click, this one fainter. Both guns were dirty, and the action on both felt rough.

  The guy, sensing my hesitation, said, “I got a lot of ammo I can throw in. Birdshot, buckshot, slugs.”

  “I thought he hunted ducks,” I said. “What were the slugs for?”

  “Protection.”

  “From what?”

  “Assholes,” he said.

  I hesitated, put the single-shot back down on the table.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m buying guns but I also write stories. For magazines, mostly. I’m doing a story on private gun sales in Maine—how there have been crackdowns in other states, but for us, the tradition lives on.”

  He looked at me and frowned, wrinkles appearing on his stubbled skull.

  “A fucking reporter?” the guy said.

  “Magazines usually call us writers. Reporters are more for newspapers, typically.”

  The frown turned into a scowl and the scowl turned into a snarl.

  “No reporter is gonna set foot in this house,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Why’s that?”

  “Out,” he barked.

  I put my hand on the table, crossed my legs at the ankle.

  “What?” I said. “Somebody spell your name wrong in the police log?”

  “Out,” he snapped, spittle flying.

  “Your guns are dirty. I don’t think you’ll get more than five for the pair.”

  He pulled his right arm back and cocked it. His bicep barely showed and flab hung from under his arm. I straightened up, half turned toward the door. I could see his fist trembling.

  “Just missed your chance to be in Outland magazine,” I said.

  “Get the fuck outta here,” he shouted.

  “Your mom here? Shouldn’t use that language around a lady. And the only way to get away with punching a reporter is to kill him after. And you’re way too out of shape for that.”

  I started for the door, which was still open, the cold, clean air cutting the cat smell.

  “What was it—child pornography or something? Figure it had to be something embarrassing to get you this upset.”

  “It wasn’t me, you son of a bitch,” he said, edging along behind me. “It wasn’t even my computer.”

  Still walking, I said, “So your buddy was the perv and you got nailed for it? Doesn’t matter if there’s no conviction. One story like that and you’re done. All you can do is hide in the house.”

  I looked around the dingy cave of a kitchen, pictured Mom off working at a convenience store to support her son, steeling herself to the stares, real or imagined.

  “Or move someplace where nobody knows you,” I said, and then it clicked. “Which takes money. So you need to sell stuff.”

  “Out,” the guy bellowed, more spittle flying, his head starting to sweat.

  “If you’re innocent, I’m sorry for you,” I said. “And I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. If you’re guilty, go to hell.”

  I stewed all the way out of town, along the Penobscot River. The perv, Welt . . . Roxanne and I as far apart as I could remember . . . it all draped over me, pushing me down into the truck seat, making every shift a labor. I didn’t see the river, the trees along the roadside barely registering. I could feel myself sinking into a deep funk, something I’d avoided even with the arguments. It was like the exchange with the pasty pervert had been the last straw.

  In the town of Winterport, I almost missed the turn to head west toward home, stomped the brakes, and swerved right and straightened out. I drove under my personal cloud past Monroe, then to a crossroads called Brooks. I looked at my phone, read the directions, swung north to my last stop. The guy had said 2.5 miles north, on the left. Mailbox was red, the number 239 spray-painted on the boulder by the driveway.

  I watched the odometer, counted off the tenths of miles. At 2.3 I slowed and watched the woods, passed a trailer with a wishing well, then saw the boulder, numbers plain as day. I braked, looked right, sa
w the driveway threading into the spruce and birch. As I started to turn in, I saw a pickup coming out. I stopped and reversed, turning around to check traffic when I pulled back out. I waited for a delivery truck, eased out onto the road, and stopped.

  The pickup, an older red Chevy with black spoke rims and loud exhaust, swung out and the driver gave a wave. As I waved back, our eyes met.

  Semi—the kid from the woods. His head pivoted as he passed. I turned and tracked with him, glimpsed another guy with him, riding shotgun. It didn’t look like Baby Fat or Billy, but beyond that I couldn’t tell.

  “Huh,” I said. I watched the truck head west, back toward Hyde and the farm. “Huh,” I said again.

  I pulled back into the driveway, drove through the woods for a hundred yards, popped out in a clearing with a new log house, a dug pond, ducks swimming along the cattailed shoreline. The guy had advertised a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, a military-style nine-millimeter, for $600.

  I pulled up to the garage where a new Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked. As I got out, a guy poked his head out of one of the garage doors. Forty, dressed in fleece vest and flannel shirt and jeans. Good-looking with an expression that said self-made success. I walked toward him and he smiled, said something to somebody inside the garage who turned out to be a black Lab. The Lab trotted out of the garage, bounded to me, and nuzzled my hand. Probably smelled cats.

  “I called about the Mini-fourteen,” I said.

  “You missed it by five minutes,” he said. “Just went out the door.”

  “Those guys in the red pickup?”

  “Saw the pickup,” he said. “Only one guy.”

  “Guy driving, baseball hat, maybe nineteen?”

  “I guess. Said he was going to give it to his dad for Christmas. Real family oriented.”

  “Works in the woods?”

  “Could be; I didn’t ask. But he was very polite. Good, direct eye contact. You know how half these young guys won’t look you in the eye. This guy, good handshake, real stand-up kid.”

  “Where was he from?”

  He looked at me.

  “Why? You want to buy the gun from him?”

  “Just curious. Want to know where the competition is.”

  “Said he was from Hyde.”

  The dog was sniffing my leg. The guy said, “Red. Cut that out.”

  He turned back to me and said, “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Yeah, well . . . , ” I began, and I went through my magazine-writer pitch. The guy listened, no expression either way. The dog sat down next to us and wagged his tail across the concrete floor. The guy cleared his throat like he was about to make a statement, which he proceeded to do.

  “I sell the occasional firearm. If I get a good deal, I turn around and try to make a small profit. I believe firmly in the right to bear arms. I also believe that guns belong in the hands of the law-abiding, not criminals. I ask for buyers to identify themselves. I interview them, in a way, to determine what sort of people they are. I think I’m a good judge of character, so that’s the extent of my background check.”

  “Did that buyer provide identification?”

  “He identified and described himself—how long he’s lived there, and so on. I saw no reason to think that the firearm would be used inappropriately. I go with my gut, and my gut’s rarely wrong.”

  “So who was he? What did he do for work?”

  The guy held up his hand to stop me.

  “That’s my statement.”

  “May I ask your name?”

  “John.”

  “Last name?”

  “Just John.”

  Damn, I thought. I looked down at the dog, his tongue lolling.

  “So this is Red?”

  “He prefers to remain anonymous,” John said.

  “What did the kid say his dad was going to do with the rifle?”

  “Varmints,” the guy said, and, like the president walking away from the podium, he strode across the garage and through a door and into the house.

  11

  More scribbling, my truck pulled over by the side of the road. I got the dialogue down, not sure if I’d need it for the story. I go with my gut, and my gut’s rarely wrong. And when it was wrong, what then?

  I put the pen and notebook down, picked up my phone just as a white work van rolled past slowly, the guy at the wheel turning to give me a once-over.

  As the van continued on I called Roxanne. Six rings and it went to voice mail. “Hey, call me,” I said. I was calling again when the phone buzzed and Roxanne’s number showed.

  “Hi,” I said. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” Roxanne said, and I heard girls laughing in the background.

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re at the school.”

  More chattering, Roxanne putting her hand over the phone and saying, “Sophie, quiet.”

  “I thought you were staying home,” I said.

  “Sophie wanted to come over and go on the swings and the tree house. And Salandra was going to be here.”

  It was becoming clearer.

  “And your friend?”

  “Welt?” Roxanne said, her public voice on. “He’s here. The girls are playing and we’re watching them and going over some things.”

  “Things?”

  “We’re working on a presentation for the administrative team. They’re a tough audience, and we need to be ready.”

  “Don’t farmers have to farm? Like all the time? Like never get a vacation? How does he have time for all this?”

  “Oh, he has the interns.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “The students from the college,” Roxanne said.

  “I see,” I said. “So they run the place and he does his peace work.”

  “Right. But we want to be sure we’re ready for their questions.”

  “Right,” I said.

  The phone covered again, muffled voices, Roxanne saying, “Okay, but be careful, you two.” Then Welt’s voice, unintelligible.

  “After our conversation I thought he might want to give you some distance,” I said.

  “No, he’s fine,” Roxanne said. “We’re going over our talking points. We want to have every base covered.”

  It was the public voice again.

  “You know how I feel,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “About him.”

  “Right. And I told you.”

  “That I was nuts, and you have a right to have friends?”

  “Exactly.”

  The same van passed, from the other direction. There was a sign on the driver’s door. A & G PLUMBING SUPPLY. The same guy at the wheel, the same slow once-over. Baseball hat, goatee, sunglasses. Didn’t look like a plumber.

  “What about Clair?”

  “I told him where we were going.”

  “And?”

  “He followed us over.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “I think so. He brought a book.”

  “And he’s in his truck?”

  “He said he might take a walk.”

  Clair taking a walk meant he had a clear view of the playground, an open line of fire.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s fine, Jack,” Roxanne said.

  Welt’s voice, calling to the girls. Something about knowing their limits.

  “Christ,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Jack, please.”

  “When are you gonna be home?”

  “An hour or two. We’re halfway through the PowerPoint.”

  “Call me when you’re leaving, okay?”

  “Have you seen those guys again?” she said.

  “No. Just a bunch of gun sellers.”

  “How was that?”

  “Fine. All good.”

  “Then I’ll see you,” Roxanne said.

  “Right.”

  I waited. She didn’t come back. No long good-bye.

  I put
the phone down, scowled, started the truck. There was a trailer across the road, a woman draping laundry on the railing of a rickety deck. A dog was around her legs and it spotted me and shoved its muzzle between the railings and started to bark. I put the truck in gear and pulled away, headed east toward home, an empty house. The road climbed past a shingled barn, chickens scratching in the yard, a rust-red tractor for sale. I had my head in my hand, a scowl on my face. I glanced up at the rearview, saw the van fifty yards back.

  Two guys showing now. I sped up, then slowed and took a quick left. It was a long right-hand turn, the hump of a culvert, and then the road straightened out. Nothing out here but bog and brush, roads named after dead men. Butler, Aborn, Webb, the signs passing as I went right, right, left, zigzagging past woods, fields, logging roads blocked by steel cables.

  The van followed.

  What, had Billy and Baby Fat subbed out the job? Hired somebody to break my legs? Whoever it was, I wasn’t leading them home.

  I watched the mirror as I descended a long hill, spruce and pine woods streaming by. The van kept pace, didn’t gain or fall back. I rounded a right-hand curve, hit the gas. We were in Hyde, my turf. I saw the logging road coming up on my left, one Clair and I had used to check out a woodlot. I braked, made sure the van was in sight behind me, slowed, and swung in.

  The truck jounced over ruts, slashed through tall grass as I missed the tracks. I pulled in fifty yards, skidded to a stop, slammed the truck into reverse, and whipped it into an overgrown turnaround, backing as the bumper flattened the brush and branches scraped underneath me.

  I stopped. The motor idled. And then the van drove past, the driver peering deeper into the woods. I counted to ten and pulled out, put my truck across the road. Stopped and shut off the motor.

  Reached for the Glock and racked a shell into the chamber.

  Got out and put the gun behind me in my waistband.

  Stood and waited.

  The road went a hundred yards deeper before there was a wood yard, only a skidder trail beyond that, too rough for the van to negotiate.

  I pictured them stopping and staring at the opening before deciding to turn around. Backing around the slash piles, taking a last glance down the trail, then heading back my way. Coming slowly up the rise.