Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Two hours into the drive they came to Cascade and pulled over in the parking lot of a diner. Muller yawned and stretched, then he looked over his shoulder and told John-Cody to sit still as he was not going anywhere. The driver got out, stamped his feet in the snow and made his way up the rickety wooden steps to the diner. He came back with some coffee in styrofoam cups and passed them through the passenger window. Neither agent looked in the back, neither of them said anything and John-Cody had to sit there and smell the freshly roasted coffee.

  ‘I’m going to the john,’ said the driver.

  Muller sipped noisily, gagged and blew on the liquid.

  John-Cody’s hands were completely numb now and they throbbed at the wrist where the feeling stopped at the metal. The agent took out a cigarette and snapped open his Zippo. The smoke drifted in John-Cody’s nostrils and he turned his head away, thinking of the crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket.

  The driver came back, stamped the snow off his shoes and climbed into the car. He shivered and worked his shoulders, then took the top off his cup while Muller went to the toilet. The driver looked at John-Cody. ‘You want a sip?’

  ‘Thank you.’ John-Cody worked his way forward while the agent held the cup for him.

  ‘Don’t you be spilling it now, I don’t want my fingers burned.’

  John-Cody sipped at the coffee and it scalded the back of his throat. The agent set the cup down again and squinted at him.

  ‘You should’ve just done the time.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  John-Cody pursed his lips and shrugged.

  ‘You want me to get you some coffee?’

  ‘I got money.’ John-Cody smiled. ‘I got cigarettes too.’ He looked over his shoulder at the loop of the door handle. ‘What say you unhook me in back? Much more of this and my hands are going to drop off.’ He gestured with his chin to the handle. ‘You can hook me up there with one hand. I still won’t be going any place. It’s hours till we get to Seattle.’

  ‘How d’you know that’s where we’re going?’

  ‘That’s where the parole officer’s at.’

  The man nodded. ‘I tell you what. You sit tight till my partner gets back and we’ll see.’

  When consulted, Muller looked through the windshield then sighed and swivelled in his seat to check the quality of the door handle. ‘All right.’

  He opened the back door and steered John-Cody out into the cold. He stood in the snow, which climbed above his ankles while the agent unlocked the handcuffs.

  ‘Now don’t try anything stupid. Because I tell you, partner, it’s that damn cold I’d just as soon shoot you and be done with it.’

  John-Cody stood shivering while Muller brought the cuffs round in front of him, then pressed him back into the seat and secured the loose cuff through the door handle. John-Cody was grateful when the door was closed again and the breath eased in his chest. The driver had stood on the steps to the diner and watched to make sure all was well before he went inside and bought more coffee. Muller was back in his seat, the engine still idling and clouds of exhaust fumes rising from the tailpipe. The driver came out with the coffee and John-Cody was able to sit in relative comfort and sip it as they headed north through the night.

  They were climbing steadily now, easing up onto the high plains where the weather could turn in a moment at this time of year. Snow started falling around late November and it did not stop till May. The snowploughs worked every day to keep the main highway clear but invariably there was a layer across the blacktop. It would bank up at the sides, sometimes eight or ten feet, and when the wind blew a horizontal storm would ensue, causing a total whiteout. If you did not know what you were doing you were dead.

  Something told John-Cody that these two agents did not know what they were doing. They took it in turns to drive, pulling over hurriedly to the side of the road to swap positions, each driving as quickly as the other and laughing when the back end slewed out of line now and again. Their easy manner bothered him. John-Cody didn’t know, but he figured they would be from the Seattle field office, which put them in rainy country. It was a land of low-lying fog and that dank drizzle that came off the Pacific in winter, nothing like the high plains of Idaho. He wanted to tell them to be careful, especially when they cut through the mountains south of Grangeville, but he knew they wouldn’t listen to him. Joe Fulton drove a delivery truck from Boise to Lewiston and travelled this road most days of his life. Only this evening when he was propping up the bar in Hogan’s he had been telling John-Cody that the road was treacherous where the county workmen had been blasting. It seemed like they had been trying to make that road wider for years.

  They climbed higher still, the road snakelike and switchbacked now, but the two agents seemed more relaxed than ever. Muller lit another cigarette and shook the pack at John-Cody.

  ‘We’re driving through the night then,’ John-Cody said.

  Muller squinted at him. ‘What do you think, buddy? You don’t stretch to a motel room.’

  John-Cody drew on the cigarette and exhaled smoke. ‘You might want to take it easy over the next bit. This road can be a bitch in the dark.’

  ‘Hey, fella.’ The driver looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘You just sit there, OK? We drove this road yesterday.’

  ‘It wasn’t snowing yesterday.’ John-Cody sat back, smoked his cigarette and looked out at the whitened high country, falling away now as the hillside dropped to their right.

  He felt the back go almost before they did: then the driver was frantically spinning the wheel and John-Cody saw the world in a spiral of white. Brakes squealed. Somebody swore. He could smell the fear in the voice, then the car was at the edge of the road and flipped over and John-Cody heard metal shear and glass splinter and he was upside down, his hand almost wrenched from his arm where it was fixed to the door.

  All was black and pain thudded at his wrist. He could smell something odd like the invasion of a dream and he didn’t know what it was. Then he must have opened his eyes because he could see a beam of light casting the snow yellow across the hillside. Hillside and snow. He remembered then: the car, the two FBI agents and prison waiting in Seattle. He felt the sudden cold in his bones and saw that the windshield was gone and the two men were motionless in their seats. The car seemed to be upright but tilting badly to the left and he worked at the window with his free hand, smearing the condensation from the glass till he could see the pit of the valley floor three hundred feet below.

  Still he sat there, not quite sure what to do. Then he realized that the door he was hunched against was buckled and the handle loose where the handcuff was attached to it.

  ‘Hello.’ The word popped out of his mouth. ‘Are you two still there?’

  Nothing. He leaned forward, his wrist caught him and instinctively he tugged: the handle gave and he could move properly now. The interior light was out, but the headlights reflected back off the white of the snow and he saw blood on Muller’s face. Feeling at his neck, he thought for a moment he was dead then he got a pulse and looked to his colleague. Again a pulse: both were unconscious but alive. All at once he realized he was free, but then the smell took definition in his head. Gasoline. The tank had ruptured and was leaking gas into the car. Very carefully he eased himself across the back seat and opened the far door. Now he stood in the snow, thirty feet below the road, where the car had been caught and wedged by a tree. The trunk was fractured but still there and that was all that kept the car from falling into the valley. The cold snapped at him like an animal and he was shivering uncontrollably. Instinct took over and he began to plough his way up the bank till he stood on the road. For a moment he could not get his bearings, but the night was clear and crisp and the moonlight edged the snow in a silvery grey wash. He figured which way was north then recognized where he was on the road, maybe ten miles south of Grangeville. Still he stood, trying to work out what to do, looking back down the slope to where the
two men sat unconscious, strapped into their seats. They would die if he did not get someone to help them. And still he stood there: this was his moment, his time to get away. With every mile his misery had been heightened, cold sweat working its way into his bones as he considered confinement all over again. The day he walked out of that penitentiary he had vowed he would die rather than be locked up like that again. Now he stood here, freezing by the roadside, with freedom a possibility. He felt as alive as he had ever felt. Yet those two men would die down there if he just left them. So what? What were they to him? Human beings, his father’s voice muttered in his head. Doesn’t much matter what a man does for a living, son: everybody’s got to feed his family. A man’s still a human being no matter what. And then he heard the grinding of gears way down in the valley and looking beyond the peak he saw the glow of headlights.

  He stood in the middle of the road as the truck worked its way round the bend and began the climb to the ninety-degree righthander where the FBI agents had shot off the road. John-Cody had his coat zipped to the neck and the handcuffs pressed up his arm so he could hide them under the sleeve. He waved both arms above his head and the driver eased down a gear and then another and the lights washed over him, hurting his eyes. The driver stopped without hitting the brakes. John-Cody heard the hiss of the emergency brake and stepped up to the door as it opened. The driver looked down at him: a big burly man wearing a heavy woollen cap, with a thick black beard clutching his jaw.

  ‘What’s your problem, partner?’

  John-Cody told him about the wreck and the driver jumped down, grabbing a flashlight as he did so. He panned it over the car still caught by the tree on the lip of the ravine.

  ‘You were in that wreck?’

  John-Cody nodded. ‘There are two other guys still down there. They’re unconscious. I was in the back. I guess I was lucky.’

  ‘I guess you were at that.’ The driver scratched his head. ‘Come on. It’s ten miles to Grangeville, we can holler up the sheriff when we get there.’

  John-Cody nodded and climbed up next to him. The driver ground in the gears and tugged the handle on the emergency brake and they rolled gently round the ninety-degree bend and down the far side of the hill. From there it was one more hill and then the Camas prairie took over where the whiteout would hit when the wind began to blow. Tonight was still, however, just very cold and the freshly fallen snow had hardened to ice underfoot. The driver wore a hunting jacket and thick waterproof boots and the cab of his truck smelled of cheap cigar smoke. John-Cody glanced at the girlie pictures he had pasted on the ceiling.

  ‘Where you from?’ the driver asked him.

  ‘McCall.’

  He held out his hand. ‘Merv Clayton.’

  ‘John-Cody Gibbs.’

  ‘Who are the other guys, those two in the wreck?’

  ‘Just two fellas. They gave me a ride from Cascade. Guess they didn’t know the road like I thought they did.’ John-Cody paused. ‘I could smell gasoline when I came to down there.’

  The man nodded. ‘We’ll be in Grangeville in just a little bit. As long as no sparks are flying that wreck’ll stay right where it’s at. You can tell it all to the sheriff, son. He’ll take it from there.’

  He eased the truck to a stop outside the sheriff’s office on the main street in Grangeville, telling John-Cody he needed to be in Lewiston in the morning and had to press on. John-Cody thanked him and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, looking up at the lighted neon sign of the sheriff’s office, acutely aware of the irony. He shook his head, blew out his cheeks then thought of the two FBI agents freezing to death in the twisted wreckage of the car. He walked into the office and told the deputy behind the counter exactly what he had told the truck driver and exactly where the wreck was. ‘You can’t miss it,’ he said. ‘It’s right on the bend where the county’s been blasting the road.’

  ‘You just sit there, son.’ The deputy pointed to the bench beside the water cooler. ‘I’ll need you to come along with me. Just let me call up Search and Rescue.’ He stepped back into the inner office and John-Cody hovered for a moment, knowing it was now or never. He went out into the night and disappeared down the alley alongside the building. Carefully and quietly he worked his way up to the main road junction, where the big Amoco gas station was situated. He stood in the lee of the motel complex as the deputy’s truck took the corner with its strobe lights flashing and headed south on the road to McCall. He waited while the Search and Rescue vehicles followed, then he crossed to the gas station with the diner attached and inspected the truck he had hitched the ride in. The driver was obviously stocking up on the calories before he headed for Lewiston. John-Cody found him at the counter drinking coffee: he sat down alongside him and the waitress poured him a cup. He held it in his uncuffed hand, the other in his pocket, letting the steam play across his face. The driver looked round at him.

  ‘Find the sheriff, did you?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Didn’t want you along then.’

  ‘I told the deputy where the wreck was at, but I got to get to Lewiston same as you.’

  The driver dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Well, it’s a long night and cold enough to kill you,’ he said. ‘Figure I could do with the company just to keep me awake. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.’

  Two days later John-Cody was in the port of Bellingham, sitting on a bench which overlooked the harbour and eating a sandwich out of waxed paper. There was no snow here but a damp winter wind blew in off the Pacific and found the tiniest gaps in his clothing. Trawlers lined the harbour walls, inshore and offshore vessels all tied together in a chain of rusting iron. They bobbed on the harbour swell and the bells tinkled on their masts and the copper-coloured cables groaned hoarse as the dredges strained in the wind. A lone gull cried above his head, swooped low over the water then headed out to sea. John-Cody finished his sandwich, folded the waxed paper and put it in his pocket. A worn metal sign flapped in the breeze outside a ramshackle fishermen’s bar across the deserted road.

  John-Cody could smell rain in the air and the urgency of the wind told him a storm was building out on the horizon somewhere. He had no idea what had happened to the two FBI agents, but he hoped the deputy made it to them in time. Luck had been with him and now he stood here at the western edge of the country that had hounded him without mercy. Laughter broke from the doorway of the bar and he was reminded of Hogan’s. He thought of his guitar and hoped Hogan would look after it properly.

  He was not much of a drinker, technically too young anyway but nobody ever carded him, especially after his jail time when he must have come out with that particular weary look in his eyes. He turned up his collar and checked his wallet for the handful of dollars he had left. He had not even had time to collect his tips from the glass jar by the cash register. He looked at the few crumpled bills and figured that the bar was warmer than here and a shot of whiskey in his veins might keep out some of the cold when he bedded down in the open air again tonight.

  The bar was noisy but not crowded. There was plenty of stool space and he shuffled onto one and laid a dollar on the counter. A surly-looking bartender with a Mexican slant to his eyes laid a towel over one shoulder and looked at him.

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Old Crow straight with water back.’

  The bartender slapped a shot glass on the counter.

  John-Cody shook a Lucky Strike from his battered pack and lit it, then looked at his surroundings where various ships’ wheels adorned the walls along with sections of fishing net and a mural of old-time whalers in open long boats. John-Cody sipped the whiskey and listened to the howl of conversation at the table under the window. Five men sat there and one of them, a fat guy in his fifties with little bits of hair poking out from under his cap, was holding court. He had a tall glass of beer at his elbow and a glass of dark rum next to it. He was gesticulating with black-nailed hands and his eyes darted with flame in their piggy sockets.
>
  ‘Where the hell is Gonzales?’

  Nobody answered him.

  ‘Did he quit or what?’

  ‘I think he had a fight with his girlfriend,’ somebody said.

  ‘That damn Mexican. When’s he going to get his life sorted out? We sail in two hours. The skipper is going to roast my ass over this one.’

  John-Cody sat and listened and as he did so an idea formed in his mind. ‘What’s the deal back there?’ he said to the barman.

  ‘Crew of the Hawaiian Oracle,’ the man muttered. ‘They’re a man down.’

  ‘Where they headed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hawaii, I guess.’ The barman shuffled away and John-Cody downed his drink and picked up his cigarettes. He moved over to the window table and stood in front of the mate.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’

  ‘Bartender told me you’re a man down.’

  The mate screwed up his eyes and looked John-Cody up and down. ‘Are you telling me you want a job?’

  John-Cody held his gaze, trembling inside but not letting it show. ‘I’m telling you I want his job.’

  ‘You been to sea before?’

  ‘I can knock the dredge pins out without killing anybody.’

  A couple of the crew laughed and the mate nodded to the empty chair. ‘Sit.’

  John-Cody did as he was told, still looking the man in the eye. He knew nothing about sea fishing: he only knew about dredge pins because he had watched them being scraped of rust at the dry docks in New Orleans.

  ‘Let me see your hands.’

  John-Cody held them out and the mate arched his eyebrows: John-Cody’s hands were rough and yellow from hard labour in prison. The mate looked him in the eye once again. ‘You look awful young,’ he said.

  John-Cody signalled to the bartender for another shot of whiskey. ‘I am awful young. What’s that got to do with anything?’