Straw Man

by Gerry Boyle

  “Hey,” I said.

  “McMorrow,” Louis said.

  “How you doing?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Or close enough to it. How you doing?”

  “Not so fine,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, that makes two of us, I guess.”

  I walked over and he flipped the book closed. It was Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

  “Enjoying it?” I said.

  “Clair gave it to me. Turns out me and old Henry have some things in common,” Louis said.

  Thoreau’s cabin. Louis’s house in the woods.

  “Just stopping the roller coaster and trying to come to some real conclusions,” he said. “He was a very smart guy.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Boiled it down to the essentials.”

  “Right. Essential truths. The stuff you should be thinking about but most people don’t.”

  “Like what, do you think?”

  “Like why we prey on each other. Why we’re such a violent species.”

  “Survival, I guess,” I said.

  “Kill or be killed?” Louis said. “But how do we get in that position to begin with?”

  “Too many people, too few resources?”

  “Christ, McMorrow. Look around you. This country is drowning in resources. We’re choking on our own prosperity. And still—”

  He trailed off. I hesitated, realizing that he and I hadn’t talked much, not one-on-one. When we’d met in Sanctuary, when that town was targeted by an arsonist and Louis was the suspect “troubled veteran,” I’d brought Clair to break trail. He and Louis had war in common. I was the third wheel.

  So how was I doing, Louis had asked. Louis, a guy who had been so ridden by guilt at the things he’d done and witnessed in the war that for months he’d only come out of the woods at night. Louis, who, until he met Clair, had lost faith in humanity and only trusted one friend, his vigilant Baskervillian hound.

  What would he think of my problems? Was it even worth trying to explain?

  “Not so great,” I repeated.

  Louis looked up, his dark, brooding eyes fixed on mine. The dog was watching me, too.

  “How so?” he said.

  I took a deep breath and unloaded on him, as they say. I told him about the ATF guys, but that wasn’t a bad thing. I told him about my conversation with Abram.

  “Hard when your beliefs start to fall apart,” Louis said, from experience.

  I told him about Abram and Semi, and he looked pained.

  “They’ll eat that kid up and spit him out,” Louis said. “Naive and vulnerable, and guys like them, they’re predators by instinct. Saw it in the army. Some people just sense weakness. They can smell it.”

  He shook his head.

  “Use him for whatever they can get out of him, and then they’ll dump him by the side of the road.”

  “Use him for what?” I said. “Start a new Bible study?”

  “You said Semi bought a rifle from one of these guys.”

  “Right. I saw him leaving. A Mini-fourteen.”

  “Kind of a popgun, but nice little nine-millimeter,” Louis said. “Maybe this Abram kid has cash. Mennonites, Amish—they operate cash-only, right? Maybe they get him to start skimming the family strongbox.”

  “Front them money? For what?”

  A piece snapped into place. Semi. Ramos and O’Day, the ATF agents. But Semi and Abram in Boston, roaming around the ’hood? That would be like Jed and Granny in Beverly Hills.

  “I don’t know,” Louis said. “What do people like them usually do with money? They buy booze and drugs, right? Maybe sex to go with the other two.”

  “Abram’s not into any of that,” I said.

  “Yet,” Louis said.

  It was all troubling, and it got worse the more I thought about it. Abram was smart, but he was a total naïf in the outlaw world of Semi and friends. Billy and Baby Fat? Abram would be like a goat staked in a lion’s cage. He’d be in over his head so fast that he—

  “Where’s Clair?” Louis said.

  I formed the words in my head.

  “He should be back soon. He’s doing me a favor.”

  Louis waited for the real answer. I told him about Billy and Baby Fat following Roxanne, our confrontation. I didn’t tell him about Welt and what he added to the mix.

  “So Clair pulled security detail?”

  “He volunteered,” I said.

  “So those guys were stalking your wife and daughter?”

  “Yeah. At least watching her. Thinking she’d lead them to me.”

  “And you’d lead them to me,” Louis said.

  “Probably,” I said.

  “You can put me on the roster for that detail.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I started it,” Louis said. “I’ll finish it if I have to.”

  It was his martyr tone, the soldier ready for a suicide mission. We were talking about a scuffle in the woods of Prosperity, Maine, but his mind was steeped in killings in the dusty villages of Anbar Province.

  “They track you down yet?”

  “Not to here, that I know of. Somebody tipped them off that Roxanne was my wife, pointed her out. So then they see her, spot her driving by. Follow her to the farm.”

  “Semi must know your truck by now, too. Seen it twice—first at the gun sellers’, then probably by the restaurant. And your Mennonite buddy there, if they’re friends, he’ll tell him about you. Town this size, nowhere to hide, at least for long.”

  I didn’t answer, just took in the bad news.

  “Thing is, I’m the one they’re really after, not you or your wife and daughter,” Louis said. “I did the worst damage to the worst guy.”

  “I’m sure they’d settle for whoever they can find,” I said.

  “A slippery slope, this kind of violence,” Louis said. “Back and forth. Prisal and reprisal. Before you know it, everybody’s fighting but nobody knows what the war was about.”

  “Hatfields and McCoys,” I said.

  “Shia and Sunnis.”

  “Catholics and Protestants.”

  “Buddhists and Muslims,” Louis said. “But we got one advantage.”

  “We’re on the side of right?” I said.

  “That,” Louis said, “and two of us are professional killers, trained by the United States government.”

  He looked at me and suddenly smiled—an eerie, black, and humorless grin.

  I heard Clair’s truck coming first. When I pulled up to the house, his truck was parked next to her Subaru. Roxanne and Sophie were waiting in the car while Clair went into the house. I was at the car when Clair came out, gave them a thumbs-up. I popped the door open and Sophie slid out, said, “Hey, Daddy. Clair’s looking for you.”

  “Well, he was looking for me here, but I was at his house,” I said.

  “Well, he was down here looking for you when you were looking for him,” Sophie said brightly. “We went to school and I played with Salandra on the playground and Mommy and Salandra’s daddy did their work.”

  Roxanne was taking her bag out of the backseat. She looked across the top of the car and gave me a brittle smile. Clair came up and stood, hands on his hips.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “What did you do?” Sophie said.

  “I talked to a boy named Abram who lives on a farm and has lots of horses.”

  “Maybe we can take Pokey there to visit,” she said.

  Roxanne came around the corner and Sophie told her, “Daddy’s friend Abram has horses, so we’re going to take Pokey there to play with them.”

  “That’s quite a plan,” Roxanne said.

  “I want to go tell Pokey about it,” Sophie said, and she started to run toward the side of the house and the trail to Clair’s.

  “No,” Roxanne said, scrambling after her, grabbing her by the arm. “You stay with us.”

  “But Clair’s here,” Sophie said. “The bad men aren’t gonna bother us.”

&
nbsp; Roxanne patted Clair on the shoulder as she led Sophie inside. The door shut and I looked up at the sky—overlapping layers of gray, the clouds sailing in different directions. As I gazed upward, raindrops ticked at my face. The rain started to fall heavier and Clair pulled at his hat.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. All quiet.”

  “You can’t keep doing this. And I can’t not work,” I said.

  “Maybe oughta call ’em out, get it over with.”

  “Louis is up at the barn,” I said. “Wants to take the lead on this one.”

  “How are his spirits?”

  “Okay at first, but then he got dark when I told him about Billy and Baby Fat watching Roxanne and Sophie.”

  “Gonna go light ’em up, is he?” Clair said.

  “Thinks it’s his fault. And he says you guys would have an advantage in a firefight.”

  “Probably right, but we don’t want him committing some sort of suicide by thug,” Clair said.

  “No,” I said. “We don’t.”

  “Better go see that boy. Always on the precipice. Doesn’t take much to send him over the edge.”

  He started for his truck. “He can fill you in,” I called after him. “I’ve been talking to this Mennonite kid, for a story. He’s having doubts about their religion. And he’s started hanging out with Semi.”

  “Not somebody you’d be talking theology with.”

  “You never know,” I said. “Maybe after trucks, guns, and girls.”

  “Always see the good in people, don’t you, McMorrow,” Clair said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  13

  The rain had paused but the clouds had darkened. The wind was gusting out of the south, birds were flying low and fast into the trees, and there was a guttural rumble of thunder from the distance. I took my stuff out of the truck, rolled up the windows, and went inside to see if another storm was brewing.

  It wasn’t, not with Sophie up. She’d brought all of her stuffed animals down from her bed and lined them up on the couch in the living room. “I’m the teacher, Daddy,” she said, when I walked in. “They are the children.”

  “What are you going to teach them?” I said.

  “To always hold your mommy or daddy’s hand when you cross the road,” Sophie said. “And never talk to the bad men because they will hurt you because they like to fight and fight.”

  “They do, honey,” I said. “But you don’t have to think about that. They went back to their town.”

  “Where the bad men live?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Where the bad men live.”

  “I hope they don’t live happily ever after,” Sophie said.

  I looked at her—six years old, and already thinking in terms of justice.

  The next step would be revenge, unless the peace plan took hold and nipped her budding notions of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  “Where’s Mommy?” I said.

  “She’s upstairs. Talking on the phone.”

  I went up the stairs. Our bedroom door was half closed and Roxanne was inside, talking. I paused in the hallway as she said, “No, I’ll work on the draft tonight, and I’ll see you in the morning.” A beat, and she added. “You, too.”

  As she hung up the phone, I started back down the stairs.

  I was at my desk in the study when Roxanne came down and started dinner. She didn’t come in, didn’t ask me about my day. I got up and went to her, taking a Ballantine ale out of the refrigerator. She was filling a saucepan. She put it on the stove and turned the burner on and then went to the refrigerator and opened the door and rummaged inside. I was standing four feet from her but it was like I was invisible.

  “How was the school?” I said.

  “Fine,” she said, taking out a bundle of asparagus and turning away, the refrigerator door closing behind her. She went to the counter and cut the ends off of the asparagus, put them on the stove by the pan.

  “How’s the planning coming?” I said.

  “Good.”

  Back to the refrigerator, this time for some cooked chicken breasts. Back to the counter, where she started cutting the chicken into small pieces and dropping the pieces into a bowl.

  “Chicken salad?”

  “Yes.”

  She took grapes from a bunch on the counter and started chopping those, too, adding them to the chicken.

  “I met some gun sellers,” I said. “And two ATF agents. One was out of Boston.”

  She turned to the refrigerator, took out the mayonnaise, and turned back.

  “A gun from around here turned up at a Boston homicide,” I said. “Or so it appears.”

  Nothing.

  “I met a Mennonite kid, too. He’s doubting his faith, which is hard, because his father is the bishop of the outfit.”

  Still nothing.

  “I bought the kid a coffee at Belle View.”

  Roxanne slipped past me. Celery. Turned back. Started ripping and chopping.

  “I think he needed somebody to talk to,” I said.

  Roxanne put the uncut celery back in the bag and whipped around to the refrigerator again. Her mouth was clamped shut, her jaw clenched, but leaning into the refrigerator she took a deep breath through her nose and said, “I’m glad you were there for him.”

  And that was it.

  Sophie chattered at dinner, about Salandra and taking Pokey to visit “Abraham”s’ horses at his big farm, and about how she was going to tell Mrs. Brown about going to the school on a Sunday.

  “Bonus points,” I said.

  “Everything isn’t a competition,” Roxanne said, then caught herself and started speaking to Sophie directly. I sat and ate and listened and drank another beer and when everyone was done, I got up and cleared the table.

  Roxanne said it was bath time, and would I hold off on the dishes so there would be hot water. I stacked the dishes next to the sink and put away the food. They went upstairs and I slipped outside and stood in the growing darkness.

  The thunderstorm was passing to the east, lightning showing through the trees and the thunder rumbling, but faintly. I walked to the end of the shed, then crossed to the truck. I unlocked the driver’s door and took the Glock from under the seat. With the gun in my waistband, I circled the property, stopping every thirty feet or so to listen.

  Voles and mice scuffled in the duff of the woods. A robin cackled as it shifted on its roost. At the east side of the property I could hear music from Clair’s barn, and when I strained, the faintest sound of men’s voices. Clair and Louis having a heart-to-heart.

  I turned and crossed the back of the lawn, stopped at the northeast corner. Standing in the darkness, I breathed slowly and listened. Wood frogs in the brush, the last of the peepers from the big marsh across the road. And then a long metallic creak, followed by a thunk.

  A door closing on a car.

  Or a truck.

  I slipped the gun out, racked a shell into the chamber. The noise had come from the east, up the road. There was a turnoff there, a woods road that was mostly overgrown, passable for maybe fifty feet. And there was a path.

  I eased along the tree line, searching for the opening. And then there was a gap in the brush, showing as a lighter shade of gray. I paused and listened, and then stepped in, putting one foot down, then the other.

  It was dark in the woods, no moon with the storm. There were no lights on the east side of the house, our bedroom dark. I stared into the blackness, walked slowly like it was a procession.

  Step. Stop. Listen.

  Step. Stop. Listen some more.

  Again.

  And then I was navigating by memory, peering into the trees, the Glock clenched, snugged along my leg. Leaves brushed my face. Spiderwebs. Mosquitoes buzzed my eyes, my ears. The trail curved left and then, I knew, it bent to the right and began to climb. And then it came out at the clearing, an elevated hummock sort of space in the woods.

  A low metallic click, li
ke a door latch opening. A creak, like the one before. A distant hiss and spatter. Urine splashing leaves.

  I thumbed the safety, made sure it was off. Shoot somebody while they were pissing? No, but I’d sure as hell make them keep their hands up.

  Another forty feet, maybe. I smelled car exhaust, saw the glimmer of chrome through the trees, a dark blocky shape. I kept moving, the urination done, a figure standing at the edge of the trees.

  Step. Stop. Listen.

  Wait.

  And then I could see it, the shape of a pickup. The figure moving back toward it, the door creaking and shutting with another thunk. The brake lights glowing on, a garish red light. The starter motor cranked, the motor coughed and then revved. I started to move faster, a walk, a trot. The lights were off and I could hear the truck moving, brush crushing under the tires.

  It was down the path, onto the road. I was running, the branches slashing at my face. As I sprinted into the clearing, I heard the motor roar, and when I hit the road, it was a black shape receding into the distance.

  I raised the gun. Sighted the shadow.

  Let my finger fall away, and then the gun, slowly.

  I walked back into the woods, used the light on my phone to check the tire marks. Four deep troughs where he had parked. The grass singed by his exhaust. I looked for cigarette butts or beer cans but found none. But then I did find a place where he had urinated, another spot where he’d stood, and the grass was trampled. I stood there and looked toward the house.

  Our bedroom light came on. Roxanne stood in the window for a moment, a clean shot.

  14

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I heard it more than I saw it. Big guy, maybe alone, but maybe not. A V-8, loud exhaust but not as loud as Baby Fat’s flatbed. Probably stock pipes, but old. Not new, but not a beater, either.”

  Clair stood with his arms crossed, looking across the yard at the house. The bathroom light was on now, Sophie out of the tub. Roxanne’s figure flitted back and forth and then was gone.